


Patch Notes

by Kimi_f



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Batfamily (DCU), Character Death, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Unhealthy number of comic references disguised as inside jokes about game development, game dev au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimi_f/pseuds/Kimi_f
Summary: Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne has one year to make the Young Justice Initiative viable again before his team is split up to go work on other projects. In the wake of yet another tragedy, his team is sinking deeper into demoralization and he’s desperate for any chance to turn this boat around.Then Conner Kent joins the studio, having been hired straight from their rival company LexCorp Games.Alternatively a game developer AU. And also hopefully it will be funny.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 21
Kudos: 48





	1. First Day

The third worst day of Tim Drake’s life started with a Facebook notification.

The sound of his phone buzzing against his bedside table cut through the cloudy migraine that had lingered for nearly a week and he reached blindly for it out of habit. Once his eyes managed to focus he saw a glaring orange number behind his lock screen.

He had 36 unread Facebook notifications.

Tim stayed away from Facebook on principle. The principle being that if you were going to sell your soul to a corporate devil there were better demons than Zuckerberg to do your business with. His account held only a picture of a rock for a profile and completely incorrect personal information. None of which had ever stopped his friends, family, or coworkers. None of which seemed to stop anyone today.

His phone buzzed again and he forced himself to navigate to the webpage to see what all the undue panic was about.

_‘I am so sorry for your loss.’_

_‘Just know you are all in our thoughts and prayers.’_

Tim slammed his phone back on the bedside table.

Fantastic.

* * *

On the Monday where Tim’s life started to end, Hot Guy was at the bus stop. Which was natural. Of course, he was. That was his routine. It wasn’t Hot Guy’s fault that Tim’s carefully constructed facsimile of a real life was unraveling.

Hot Guy had been at the bus stop every day for the last two years of Tim’s fake life. It had been Stephanie who pointed him out. Back when they lived together they had taken the bus together to work and Hot Guy had quietly become part of their morning routine.

Hot Guy was tall. Taller than should have been legal. Hot Guy always wore glasses and earrings and three out of five days a week wore some form of plaid. He stood too large to pull off the hipster look, and so looked more like a wholesome farmer than a true Metropolis native. Sometimes he wore a beanie, and most days he clutched a slim laptop bag close to his side as he waited for the bus while sipping coffee.

Hot Guy always had a coffee. And he was always at the bus stop. Always the same time as Tim. They took the same bus, but Hot Guy got off one stop ahead of Tim.

It also wasn’t Hot Guy’s fault that, after being rudely awoken by a society that hadn’t yet figured out that sometimes silence was better than unfelt digital condolences, Tim hadn’t had it in him to be put together. He wore an old, ratty grey Met U sweatshirt with a coffee stain on the right sleeve that he’d never been able to get out. It was his “I’m really not trying” sweatshirt and he’d paired it with the cleanest pair of jeans he could find, a hat in an equally unflattering grey, and a tall thermos full of more coffee than most people drank in a week.

He hadn’t slept well, and he hadn’t been taking care of himself. But he also knew people at work would understand. It would go public soon anyway. The bus pulled up, and Tim had just slipped into a seat near the front when he heard someone softly clear their throat.

Tim looked up. Hot Guy stood there, in a plaid shirt and beanie with a small LexCorp logo on the right side above the temple. He looked down at Tim with an all American, bleached white smile.

“Hey, can I sit here?”

Tim nodded stiffly and moved his bag off the less than pleasant bus seat. Hot Guy sat down. Tim cringed internally. He couldn’t have looked very good. He knew that. 

He thought that would be the end of their polite public exchange, but then Hot Guy spoke up again.

“So, uh, do you work at Waynetech?”

Tim looked up from where he’d been pretending to scroll through his phone.

Hot Guy gestured to Tim’s computer bag. The Waynetech Entertainment logo was emblazoned across the front of his bag. It had been a gift during Tim’s first week of work and was now well worn with the two years of traversing across the city every day for work.

“Uh, yeah,” Tim said, not interested in starting a whole new conversation with Hot Guy. Not today.

“Right. Cool. Do you like it?”

“It’s alright.”

“Oh.”

Silence as the bus hit a pothole and those standing swayed a little before righting themselves. No one else on the bus spoke. It was too early on a Monday to be talking.

“I’m a Super main,” Hot Guy said, conversationally. He had pulled out his phone but kept talking. “I used to be a Cyborg main but I switched after the Graduation Day event patch.”

“Look,” Tim said, cutting him off before he had to hear another fan complain about how they’d nerfed Cyborg’s cannon or fucked up the year's roster with Graduation Day. Everyone involved was _very_ aware of what fans thought of Graduation Day. “I’d love to sit here and talk about this. But I’m having a pretty shitty day. And I just want to be left alone.”

As he spoke, Tim’s phone buzzed against his thigh. A quick look at the screen confirmed that the news had gone public. Alerts flooded in from every account he owned. He wanted to throw it. Anything to fucking turn off the noise.

“Popular guy,” Hot Guy said quietly, before shutting up like Tim asked and sulking.

Tim sighed.

And that would have been the end of a brief, awkward, terrible encounter if it weren’t for the fact Hot Guy didn’t get off the bus today. Tim didn’t really notice, too preoccupied watching the endless feed of condolences on his Twitter.

But he did notice when he stood up for his stop that Hot Guy stood up with him. He also noticed when Hot Guy followed him from the bus stop, across the street to the small office park that held Waynetech Entertainment’s four-story building. 

And he absolutely, definitely, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, noticed when Hot Guy followed him into the lobby of the Waynetech office and stopped by the front desk with a winning smile to talk to the office assistant.

“Hi there. My name is Conner Kent. Today’s my first day. I was told I would be meeting a Tim Drake?”

Tim was man enough to admit when he was a coward. He bolted for the elevator and didn’t look back.

* * *

Tim’s team lived on the north side of the second floor. The main feature was the charmingly named “pit” which swarmed with programmers, artists, and the occasional wayward producer there to ask after things that should have been finished yesterday. When the elevator opened, Tim swept the room, spotted Stephanie on the far side of the pit with Bart Allen, and made a beeline for it.

Everything was Stephanie’s fault. Somehow. 

Tim had a very short list of people daring and stupid enough to try and do something that would knowingly set him off. In fact, there was only one person on that list, and she was standing in the art half of the pit, waving her arms while Bart gesticulated wildly. He appeared to be trying to imitate some kind of great ape, but Tim had long learned to drown out both the sight and sound of Bart, lest the distraction of trying to decipher him overwhelm.

“Stephanie.” Tim stopped in front of them. He held his coffee like armor, a single grasping shred of sanity in his ruined morning.

Stephanie paused and Bart, who had better survival instincts by far, immediately sat down in his chair, spun around, and opened up a Maya scene in an attempt to look busy. There was indeed an ape on the screen. Tim didn’t look at him. He focused his remaining energy on trying to glare at Stephanie, really trying to impress upon her how frustrated he was.

“Sir, yes, sir?” Stephanie said, leaning against an empty office chair and sounding for all the world like she didn’t know why Tim was upset. 

Tim sighed and took a long sip of his coffee. It tasted lukewarm and watered down. He grimaced.

Sleep deprivation did not a good instant coffee make.

Stephanie continued to look oddly confused. Maybe she really didn’t know. She hadn’t been the only person in the interviews before Tim left, and she didn’t actually hate him.

“So I heard we have a new hire…” he started. Then stopped because once he started he realized exactly how insane he would sound if he asked out loud whether or not Stephanie had intentionally hired the Hot Guy from the bus stop to torment him.

Stephanie’s eyes lit up and she grinned. “Oh yeah, isn’t it awesome?”

Nevermind. She had and he hated her.

“Tell me you didn’t,” Tim said, heart sinking as Stephanie got visibly more excited. He started doing the mental calculus required to rebook all his weekly meetings so that he could take them from home, or else literally never leave his office.

“So you did meet him! Tim, he’s a total fan. Like, played competitively in college, fan. I think he almost cried during the Interview. He even played the Titans: West expansion-”

“That game was terrible.”

“-and he has a ton of experience. Like a lot. He worked on the LexCorp project.”

“The one they keep not releasing?” Bart poked his head up. When Tim’s head snapped towards him he ducked back down immediately. “And nevermind.”

“Code Name Project Cadmus,” Stephanie winked in an over exaggerated fashion. “He’s also got a couple indies under his belt. Trust me, Tim, he’s as awesome as he is hot.”

“You didn’t say that. And I didn’t hear it.” Tim sighed and stopped listening. Great. Cassie could handle onboarding. It sounded like they’d get along just peachy anyways. He could probably tag Stephanie or Kory to handle getting Hot Guy up to speed on all the basics, how to use the game engine, the latest build of the game, and the latest assignments coming down from on high. If he played his cards right, Tim figured he could go about a week until he actually had to talk to the man face to face.

“I asked Cass to do the uh, tour, and stuff. I figured you would, ya know. Considering.” 

Finally, Stephanie looked appropriately uneasy given her complete overstepping of all of Tim’s known boundaries. But it wasn’t for the reasons Tim wanted. When he looked up from where he’d been contemplating the peeling label on his thermos he caught both Bart and Stephanie staring.

The silence stretched on and Tim realized belatedly they were waiting for him. “I, uh, thanks. Stephanie.”

“Tim if you need anything-”

He shook off her tentatively reaching hand and stepped aside. “No I just...let’s get the morning started.”

He walked off towards the corner of the office where a small, glass encased room with two desks sat. 

One was empty, had been for some time, though Tim had heard a rumor from Steph, who heard from Cassie, who heard from their IT guy Freddie that there was talk somewhere about moving the desk somewhere where it could be used. Tim had not, of course, been privy to those conversations.

The other was Tim’s. It was covered in countless stickers and figures. Some his own, many slapped onto his desk by others. Little markers of people no longer on the project. He found a new one sitting by his keyboard when he sat down to boot up his desktop.

Staring up at him, with arms placed on his hips in the most classic power pose of all time, was a ten inch tall figurine of the man in blue himself. His plastic cape billowing forever in a nonexistent wind. Superman stared straight ahead, and after a moment, Tim grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around so he could stare out into the office beyond.

On the bottom of the toy, the little stand had a small engraving across it. 

_Timothy Drake Wayne_

_For five years of hard work and service with Waynetech Games._

* * *

Tim had miscalculated terribly. He was doing that a lot lately. 

While Stephanie had been able to quietly ensure Cass and Cassie were set to handle Hot Guy’s first day necessities, there were other niceties expected of the workplace that he hadn’t thought to consider. Mainly team lunch.

Stephanie popped her head into his office at half past noon, already looking sorry, and said, “We’re walking down to the Bistro. Do you want us to get you anything?”

Tim stared down at the keyboard. He hadn’t gotten anything done. Not really. He kept opening tasks and closing them again. Spinning his wheels on old bugs he knew he could fix if he could just see past the fog in his brain. 

He probably shouldn’t go out. People would understand. Even the ones who harped on him for his health, for his lack of social skills, they would leave him alone today. Probably tomorrow too. Probably for a few weeks before their memories faded and they forgot why they were treating him like glass. He could avoid Hot Guy and Stephanie’s painfully obvious looks.

But not forever. He had promised himself, and Dick, and everyone that he’d be better about it this time.

“I like the Bistro,” he said instead, and because Stephanie always knew what he meant, she held out an arm and offered him a gentle smile.

He latched onto it like a lifeline.

Stephanie didn’t say a word, just walked him out of the office. Tim let himself float. Stephanie was one of the few, perhaps the only, person he could do that with. She had known him now for nearly as long as Jason had. Next year, she would have known him longer. She guided him and he let her lead, carefully tuning out the rest of the team. Oh he said the right things. Nodded at the right time. If they noticed anything was off they would chalk it up to grief. Tim found a more comfortable spot to be in his head, and he settled in.

He needed this. Needed to make sure he didn’t slink into some hole and cut everyone off the way… 

Well the way Bruce had.

He used the walk to the Bistro to catch up on the current state of the game. 

Tim’s Robin was different from Dick’s Robin. Dick’s Robin, original Robin, had bounced through the heights of Gotham City with a weightless feeling. Tim could picture clear as if it was yesterday, the sight of Robin leaping through the Gotham night, trailing after Batman with triple flips and quadruple somersaults.

Tim’s Robin didn’t trail. Tim’s Robin moved with weight. Instead of flying through the air after the shadowy figure of Batman, Tim’s Robin dropped to street level, and where Batman went high, Robin went low. Where Batman pulled his punches, Robin drilled down, leaving no room for retreat. 

It still wasn’t enough.

The unsettling presence of the Joker, announced with a shrill, manic laughter, still chilled him to the bone. Echoed in his mind even as Robin pulled back too late.

Far too late.

_This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me._

“-Tim?”

Tim looked up. Somewhere between watching Robin make a poorly timed grapple and getting caught in a broken animation of the Joker swinging a crowbar down, he had managed to sit down at a brightly lit table in the center of the restaurant. Hot Guy sat across from him, with startling blue eyes, hand raised and extended. He made a good show of not feeling awkward about the undoubtedly extended pause. He glanced around the table. Several sets of eyes turned back to their appetizers. He hadn’t even noticed the waiter come by.

He turned to regard Hot Guy and mentally tried to relabel him New Guy. New Guy looked like he might be considering rescinding the handshake, but Tim managed to scrape together the last of his manners and took his hand.

“Sorry about this morning,” New Guy said. He looked like he meant it, at least.

Tim tried to tune the rest of the lunchtime conversation out after that. He wanted to get back to the game. His last conversation with Garfield before he left had been brutal. They’d managed to get the sidekicks playable, but that was all. Gar had told him, not unkindly, they would need to make some serious changes. He’d been part of the original Titans team, and had watched the original Sidekicks project fail, repeatedly. Unspoken, of course, was how he had watched the current team fail for over a year now too. 

Sidekicks couldn’t just be playable. They had to be _fun._

He tried running the game in his head again, this time swapping the map from Gotham to somewhere a little more like the original Titan’s map. But as soon as he moved Robin to the Titans Tower it seemed impossible to escape Joker. Robin needed the mobility of dozens of tall buildings and nooks and crannies. Joker just needed a crowba-

“-Bruce Wayne?” New Guy said.

Tim snapped up again but New Guy wasn’t looking at him. He was talking to Garfield, who paused mid bite into a faux meat sandwich and involuntarily looked over at Tim. 

Tim paused the game, for the first time truly interested in the surrounding conversation. Stephanie sat on his right hand side, and a plate of breaded and bacon filled mac and cheese sat in front of him. She must have ordered for him because on autopilot Tim always ordered the chicken skewers. The drink was correct, at least. Black coffee. Though she got him a water he chose to ignore.

Bart sat on his left, and New Guy sat across from him, next to Garfield. It looked like the rest of the team had pulled up a second table, and he scanned them briefly to see who had come out. Jaime, Kory, Cassie, all the social ones. 

“We, uh, yeah. We heard. They announced it to the company first,” Garfield said, using an amount of tact unusual for him. “It’s uh, big news.”

“Yeah, I just found out this morning,” New Guy said. “It’s crazy to think this- well. I mean it’s just crazy.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Tim cut in. Garfield’s eyes went wide and he turned back to his food, quickly shoveling some chips into his mouth. Next to him, Tim could feel Bart begin to thrum, hand tapping out patterns along his napkin.

New Guy turned, all blue eyes and hipster glasses, towards Tim. He looked surprised that Tim had said anything at all. Tim shrugged.

“It’s not like he actually ran the studio. And Fox has been Chairman for the last four years.” He watched New Guy, and tried to gauge a reaction. New Guy seemed fully enraptured by the topic. His buffalo wings lay untouched. Everyone else at the table pointedly looked away and tried very hard to not act like they were listening. 

“Still.” New Guy put his elbows on the table, leaning forward. “It must be a huge morale hit. To lose someone like that? I mean Wayne was an icon.”

“Maybe to some people,” Tim said, finally looking away. Bruce Wayne, Icon. In some ways that said more than a lot of people realized.

“Some people? He’s like, the face of technology. People are saying, were saying, he was gonna save the world with his green tech. Not to mention the smartphones and drones and the space camera and shit. I don’t think there’s a software engineer on the planet who hasn’t dreamed of working for him. Plus he did all those dumb movies in the nineties. It’s a real shame that he’s gone.” New Guy seemed to lean forward as he talked. By the time he got to Bruce’s ill thought out career in cinema he had practically leaned halfway across the table.

It felt oddly genuine.

“He hated videogames. He thought the first Justice League game would fail and tried to pull the plug on the project multiple times before it got released. That’s why they had to publish with Queen. They couldn’t even convince their own CEO to publish their game.”

New Guy frowned, and Tim did always delight a little in being the one to break other people’s perception of lovable, wacky, tech billionaire Bruce Wayne. 

“How could he hate games? Isn’t he Batman?”

Tim laughed. “He sure is.”

New Guy looked like he wanted to keep going. Looked like he would rise to any bait Tim put in front of him at this point and Tim revelled in the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over the rest of the table. Then Stephanie cleared her throat.

“Anyways, how are you liking the office, Conner?”

Tim scowled and glared down at his mac and cheese. New Guy, Conner, turned, looking just as put off at being interrupted, but apparently had been raised better than Tim. He smiled and started on about the kitchen in, again, a suspiciously genuine manner.

The rest of lunch was no more interesting than the beginning half had been and Tim ate, but didn’t really taste much of it. By the time they were leaving, he still had over half his meal left. Stephanie asked the waiter for a box on his behalf and he relaxed and let her handle it. As they stepped up to the door, he saw Bart and Conner standing in the entryway.

Bart was wiry, and tall, with wild auburn hair and he was leaning up so he could whisper something to Conner without the others hearing. From where he was standing Tim could see the moment Conner found out. His eyes went wide. Almost instinctively, Conner’s eyes swept around the dining room looking for Tim, and he flinched when he found him. Tim just stared. Stephanie said something he didn’t hear off to his side.

He watched as Bart continued talking, and a hint of pity seeped into Conner’s nervous face, followed by a flush of embarrassment before he looked away.

Tim closed his eyes for a moment and let his mind drift back to Gotham.

* * *

Bruce’s funeral was the third funeral Tim attended in as many years. By now he considered himself practiced at the art of dying in modern society. There were things no one told you about in school, things Tim learned the hard way, but that paid off in the end, when he arrived at Wayne Manor and found Dick Grayson in Bruce’s old study.

Dick had grown his hair out. It nearly brushed his shoulders, something Tim hadn’t seen since he had joined Waynetech. He had stubble that was bordering on becoming a scratchy beard, and when Tim stepped into the room he looked up. His eyes were red but his face looked dry.

“You don’t need to be in here,” Tim said. He certainly hadn’t intended for Dick to see it in its current state. Boxes had been stacked neatly on one side of the room, and Bruce’s desk had been thoroughly cleaned out of paperwork and old files. His computer backed up and moved. Tim hadn’t exactly finished picking the place apart yet. He’d rather hoped he’d have it cleaned up before people arrived for the service.

“You should have called me,” Dick said, voice raw. “I could have helped.”

Tim winced. That was blatantly untrue. Dick was many things and Tim loved him dearly, but he wasn’t built for this the way Tim was. He wouldn’t have been able to stand it. Going through the paperwork, collecting social security numbers, insurance cards, login details. Having to call everyone, the doctors, the lawyers, the insurance company, the funeral home.

How many times did Tim have to repeat back the same information? Death had a strange monotony to it.

Dick was good at many things. Had held Tim once, after his dad died, before Tim knew what would happen next. Had supported Bruce like a pillar after Jason, withstood it as the man crumbled and then put himself back together again bit by bit into something resembling functional.

But the banal details of it? 

Dick didn’t have the practice Tim had. Tim had composed the social media posts, canceled the accounts, called the friends. It only made sense for him to do it. Dick would be needed, more than he realized. He couldn’t let the other man distract himself with things that were so meaningless. 

Tim stepped around Bruce’s old desk, careful of the boxes, and wrapped Dick into a hug. Dick sank forward, shoulders sagging into the hug.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said in a coarse whisper.

Tim nodded and didn’t move. Not until Dick moved first, carefully pulling back. Tired, exhausted, and grieving, Dick still found the time to frown down at Tim’s own disheveled appearance.

“You look tired.”

“I am,” Tim said, but inside was simply grateful that Dick had moved past the boxes and bureaucracy.

“Let’s call Alfred. We have a long weekend ahead of us.”

Tim nodded and let Dick get up and pretend that seeking out Alfred was anything other than an act of comfort. Dick had known Bruce far longer than any of the rest of them, and by extension also Alfred. The older man would understand better than Tim ever could and would equally need support right now. Tim let him go, noting only that he would have to come back to the office later and finish packing. There were still documents Lucius had asked about and pictures that needed to be saved.

* * *

Tim had made sure that no one would be asked to speak at the funeral. He had made that mistake the first time. He had thought he was ready. When he had stepped up in front of the room full of people, he had choked. The only man who could have done any justice to the feelings swirling through the room at Bruce’s service was Alfred, and Tim could not imagine asking him to speak. He was already grieving the loss of a son, he didn’t need distractions or public humiliation.

The size of the service had also been a quiet point of contention, though Tim had made efforts to hide it from Alfred and Dick. Another mistake Tim had already made before. There had been pressure, mostly from business associates and the occasional distant acquaintance to the Wayne empire, to make the service a large affair. To hold something so that the city of Gotham could grieve alongside them. Because these strangers thought they were grieving. Had made that much clear in their thousands upon thousands of posts, reactions, videos.

Tim had been kind but firm, and Lucius had backed him up. Let the city organize something if they wanted, the Wayne family would hold no such public address.

In the end they held the funeral in a small room on the first floor of the Wayne manor and the guest list was a short but necessary nine people. 

Alfred, his father by any measurement, led most of the services with a quiet sort of grief that Tim admired. His very presence calmed the rest of the guests. He stayed out of the way, and yet not a person dared approach without first speaking softly with him. 

Damian stayed with him. As the only true son of Bruce Wayne, and as the most openly malicious towards Tim, he had expected the boy to present more of a problem. He stayed by Alfred’s side but his eyes remained glued to Dick Grayson’s back. Damian had always looked at Dick like he hung the moon in the sky, and he seemed at a loss of what to do now that Dick sat, leaning against his fiancee and seemingly incapable of going anywhere on his own. Damian hadn’t seen Dick after Jason’s death, had never had to face his older brother when the man wasn’t shining with easy confidence and answers. 

With Barbara was her father, Gordon, who sat the entire time in somber silence.

Selina took the longest time at the front of the room. She had been the one to request the open casket and though Tim hadn’t quite been able to stomach properly approaching the body, it appeared to have been the correct choice.

Gordon did wind up saying a few words. The most composed and able to do so, he raised his voice for a moment, only a moment, and addressed the room.

“I know we agreed this would be a small service. No big speeches or anything. But I wanted to give Bruce a final send off. He was a good man. And the world is a lesser place now. Gotham is a lesser place.”

The music had been the hardest part. Bruce had always been unconcerned with music but he had been trained in classical piano. In the end, Tim found the least sentimental but still tastefully sad piano pieces he could, made sure Bruce’s best portraits were hung behind the casket and prayed no one commented.

No one did. The small audience seemed to approve, Talia didn’t start any fights with Selina and Lucius helped the men who arrived to transport the body to the crematorium. 

Lucius had been a godsend in the last two weeks, taking care of all the little things Tim couldn’t, more often than not before Tim could ask. 

“This is beautiful Tim,” Dick said after the ceremony had wound down, and only the Gordon’s still lingered in their home. 

Tim frowned at the place the casket had been. Now only the candles and oddly hung portraits remained, creating an off, empty feeling in the space. He didn’t see much beauty in it. But then again, the compliment was the kind people were expected to give at these functions.

“It was nothing.”

“No it was- he would have preferred it.”

Tim didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know where to go after the soft compliments. “We’ll scatter the ashes. You, me, and Damian.”

Dick nodded and reached out pulling Tim into a stiff hug. Tim froze. He should have expected it but he hadn’t and it took him longer than he wanted to relax. Long enough to feel guilty. He really needed to get used to Dick’s way of being physical, because he would need more, not less, of that comfort in the coming weeks.

He tried to let himself enjoy it, told himself he could suffer a thousand hugs if it kept Dick Grayson happy. Tried not to feel guilty when his mind flashed back to the office waiting for him when he got back on Monday.

* * *

Tim collapsed the moment the door to his room closed. He fell facedown into a beanbag chair he didn’t remember owning and just laid there. He breathed in, smelling fabric and that slight dusty smell that permeated the manor no matter how they aired it out. It soothed him, the way only familiarity could. He laid there longer than he should have, longer than he would have liked.

But eventually, gradually, despite the protest in his arms as he pushed himself up, Tim managed to sit up. His room lay practically untouched. He’d only slept in it three, maybe four times since Bruce’s death two weeks ago. The rest of his time had been spent in a frantic haze in Bruce’s study, in the office, in his apartment at 3AM wondering what he was going to do about the boxes he was already packing. 

When Bruce had shown him the room nearly two years ago Tim had dismissed it. He didn’t need handouts from anyone, let alone Bruce Wayne. Now it was just another painful reminder of his uncertain place in the house. 

Bruce had been tactful with the decor. He imagined Alfred had much to do with that. The room was simple, modern, and spotless from lack of use. At the far side of the room was a television with a neat line of consoles beside it. Tim smiled despite himself.

Bruce hadn’t known a Gamecube from a Dreamcast. 

Then he noticed the desk. Like everything else it was modern and minimalist, with squared corners and long black metal legs. But sitting atop it, looking slightly out of place, was a clunky, sticker covered laptop. It had to be at least five or six years old, maybe more. Tim had lost track. 

He sat down in front of the desk and opened the laptop. It had been cleaned, though Tim had always kept his keyboard and screen spotless. It looked exactly like it had in college and he felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. 

He booted it up.

His hands flew across the keyboard, the password coming more from muscle memory than any real recollection. There was a smattering of files on his desktop, half remembered projects and folders. 

Even as a small part of him wanted to twist at the memories, he moved through the files on his desktop until he found one that drove the knife particularly deep. He clicked on it.

There was something masochistically satisfying about watching the screen go black, before Jason Todd’s voice echoed out of the tinny laptop speakers.

_Let’s find out how tough you really are..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what to say... I was planning on waiting to publish but things just changed recently and I needed the outlet.
> 
> This is going to be another slice of life timkon slowburn in which Jason plays a surprisingly important role. So buckle in. If you’re still on the fence, think basically the Office but with a lot of comic book commentary disguised as game development commentary. 
> 
> There’s a really great quote I won’t get a chance to use in the story but that I want to leave here with you all before you read the rest of this. I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this:
> 
> "Or maybe game development is a bunch of developers sitting in a room, setting themselves on fire."


	2. Deadlines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conner absolutely had to apologize. He had made a complete ass of himself, twice, in front of his new boss, effectively. Worse still, the look on the other man’s face as Conner fucking buried himself after digging his grave was enough to convince him he would forever be on the project lead’s shit list. He had never seen anyone’s eyes go so cold.
> 
> So much for avoiding hostile work environments. His team at Cadmus had warned him.

Tim sat on the beer stained fabric couch, laptop balanced on his knees while the people around him continued to inconsiderately holler and slosh around the alcohol in their cups. His coffee table was now more solo cup than table. His gas station ear buds were too tinny and too low powered to cut through the thrumming music jumping out of the speakers on his shared TV. 

Ives was...somewhere. Tim’s former high school best friend turned roommate (soon to be ex-roommate if one more person spilled beer on their carpet) had disappeared early into the party. So had Callie though, so maybe at least someone was getting something out the supposed “house warming” party. Tim was happy for them. Really. Ives had been holding a torch for her for far, far too long.

Another person knocked into the couch, sending a drink precariously close to Tim’s laptop and he held it close, hunching over and using his body as a shield. If it weren’t for the fact he was positive Ives was using their room right now he wouldn’t have still been out in the open. As it was, someone had to keep an eye on the packed apartment full of inebriated barely adults.

Tim sighed and jumped as a weight settled onto the couch beside him, followed by the hiss of a beer can being snapped open. He didn’t look away from his computer screen.

Drunk party goers tended to leave him alone if he didn’t acknowledge them.

“So I’m sitting there,” a gravelly voice, probably one or two beers too deep, said from beside him, “having the time of my life. And I can’t help but notice you're the only guy in the room who appears to still be sober.”

A drink shoved into Tim’s line of sight, and he pulled back and looked up into a grinning face. The boy sitting next to him on the couch looked older, like he might have been a transfer or something. There was week old scruff on his chin and cheap beer on his breath as he leaned in and waved the can suggestively. Tim scowled.

“I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Don’t drink.”

“Suit yourself.” The boy sat back and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, displacing several solo cups. Tim sighed but ignored it. He did not want to fight any drunkards.

Instead he focused on the thing he could control, namely the computer in front of him. His laptop was chunky, with grooves and cutouts and lined in gamer red around the edges. It was the kind of computer designed to look more powerful than it was. He hated the machine itself but loved the sentiment. It had been his going away present from his dad. Something powerful enough for Tim to play all those games his dad never understood.

Of course, powerful enough to run games and powerful enough to make them were two different things, and despite the price tag the laptop struggled to run standard games at higher than mid level settings. As he opened up the material editor the entire program froze up. Then his computer’s fan began chugging with a whirring he could hear over the party. In seconds the program seized his computer entirely, and then crashed, leaving him staring at a desktop background of a  J ustice League: International  wallpaper.

“Yeah, I don't know what it is about the material editor in this update, but it eats ram like nobody's business. You might want to try a different engine if you’re gonna be using that potato,” the guy next to him said, and Tim’s head snapped up. He leaned into Tim’s personal space with complete disregard, giving Tim’s desktop a once over. “Good taste. That game was better than whatever the fuck the Justice League: Infinite Crisis shit was.”

“You didn’t like Crisis?” Tim asked, previous disdain forgotten and now suddenly interested in this man and his opinions. Everyone liked Crisis. 

The boy shrugged and he totally had to be older. He seemed too casually confident to be anything other than a senior as he leaned back.

“I mean, I get the fans love it, but what a fucking cash grab. Just bring back the Titans already you cowards.”

The boy shook a fist at the air and then grinned over at Tim. Tim realized with a start he had been grinning like a fool himself and clamped down on it with a flush.

Awesome. His first time meeting someone who kind of understood what he was talking about and he was acting like a dweeb.

The boy just took it in stride though, gesturing with his beer while he talked. “Just because everyone got a hard on for Nightwing doesn’t mean we need to fuck the multiplayer lineup to get him in there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the multiplayer, like having him in it, but I’m a Titan’s kid through and through. I can’t believe they never made another single player title-”

“They keep leaking rumors about it but the lead writer for their single player projects left the studio like, a couple years ago? And Queen is notorious for trying to milk the multiplayer money,” Tim recited it off like it was fact, vaguely aware he might sound a bit too presumptuous, that he’d interrupted and should not have. “They’re the reason Kord Games is doing mobile titles now.”

The boy snorted into his drink. “Well, glad that someone besides me read Gamasutra.”

He grinned at Tim, and while there was an edge to it, it didn’t seem mean. “You know I can’t knock it for what it was. Crisis was a fucking game changer, but in the end it was just a shoehorned excuse to bring back some nostalgic character designs, retcon a few things, and juice up the multiplayer lineup without having to release a sequel. What a joke.”

Tim smiled. “You mean what you said about the Titans?”

“Dude, the Titans game was my jam. I used to make these mods - I had this red version of Nightwing and I- why are you laughing I’m serious-”

Over the course of the other boy’s rant they had somehow gotten closer. He chalked it up to needing to half shout over the music to be heard.

“Let me show you.”

Tim pulled up an old project that he had buried in a dense network of folders. It took a couple seconds, and in that time a small part of him worried maybe he would bore the other boy. But the boy, whoever he was, simply stared at Tim’s computer, waited patiently as he searched for the executable. It was probably the alcohol making him too lazy or tired to get impatient.

“Here,” Tim launched the program, and, after a moment's hesitation, handed the boy his laptop.

Before he grabbed it, the other boy hastily set down his drink, ran a hand though black hair, and wiped both hands on faded black jeans before carefully balancing the laptop across his lap. Tim found a comfortable position beside him, and nervously watched the boy’s face instead of the screen. He hated seeing his own work.

The boy spent only a few seconds staring before breaking into a grin. He turned sharp teal eyes on Tim.

“Is this-”

“Just play.” Tim handed him his headphones.

So he did. He played for barely two minutes. Tim counted, but it felt like an eternity. He watched the boy manipulate the character on screen, mouth set in a grim line. Like he was studying the game carefully. When he completed the level - or rather when ninja mooks running the same animation stopped running at his character, he looked up.

“That was amazing!”

“It really wasn’t-”

“That was- Is this a mod?”

“I...no. Not yet. But I did sneak Robin into the game last year before they shut down my account for cheating.”

“Are you an art major?”

“Computer science.”

“What year are you?”

“Sophomore.”

The boy sat back but he was still grinning at Tim’s game. Tim hummed with the praise, however odd it felt coming from some rando at a party. He had worked hard recreating the original model of Robin after failing to find a rip of them online.

“Do you do this a lot?”

“I guess.”

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“No?”

“My name is Jason Todd.” The boy leaned forward, hand outstretched, “I’m a lit major-” Tim almost laughed but managed to hold back. “with a minor in computer science. You should swing by computer lab 29 sometime.”

“What’s in it for me?” Tim said, but he knew he would be going. He could feel the exhilaration like liquid courage and if this computer lab meant more Jason, or more people like him, he was in.

Jason just grinned.

* * *

Conner absolutely had to apologize. He had made a complete ass of himself, twice, in front of his new boss, effectively. Worse still, the look on the other man’s face as Conner fucking  _ buried _ himself after digging his grave was enough to convince him he would forever be on the project lead’s shit list. He had never seen anyone’s eyes go so cold.

So much for avoiding hostile work environments. His team at Cadmus had warned him about jumping ship to Waynetech.

“The grass is always greener,” Mal had said. “But every studio has their problems.”

“Yes, but their CEO isn’t insane,” Conner had countered, at the time not knowing that said CEO was dead.

“All CEO’s are insane,” Mal said, shaking his head at Conner’s naivete. 

But what had Conner done? He’d applied to the open position on the Justice League team, despite having no AAA titles on his resume to speak of and barely enough brains to have lasted as long as he had at LexCorp. And when the interviewer had mentioned they were working on a new Titans project? He had basically begged the very nice woman to hire him. 

So, now, after spending his first day antagonizing the apparent son of the apparently dead CEO (who hadn’t been the CEO? Or had only been CEO in name? Conner hadn’t really followed that bit) who was also his project lead, he found himself standing outside the little glass office in the far corner of what Cassie had referred to as ‘the Pit’.

8 AM was dragging into 8:30 and only Conner and one of the programmers had shown up. Conner had always been an early riser, much to the chagrin of basically every coworker and classmate he ever had. Tim’s office stood empty, lights off. It was a strange corner office, with a glass wall separating it from the pit. Across the glass was a network of scribbles- and network was truly the only word for it. Expo pen lines connecting thoughts to branches to more thoughts in wild and barely legible handwriting. He recognized some buzzwords, like Hero System and Graduation Day, and then found his gaze falling past the glass.

Tim’s desk was covered in old company swag and little figures that looked like they came from the first run of the Blackest Night series by Queen Collectibles. Not that Conner was terribly interested or anything, but he had tried to buy that exact statue of Nightwing about three times and had always come up short because his time management needed work and some people were very aggressive bidders and -

“Excuse me. You’re standing in front of my door.”

Tim held the same thermos from yesterday. It was comically tall, and skinny, and stainless steel. He was apparently going for a Steve Jobs look today, minus the glasses, which Conner admitted was a significant improvement from the day before, where Tim had looked like an underfed college student. A dangerously, good look, actually, Tim had the kind of sharp features that could kill a person. Namely Conner, who stared like an idiot. Tim’s blue eyes flickered towards where Conner was still blocking the door. Conner felt himself flush and jumped back. 

Tim made to move past him, appearing content to forgo any social niceties in favor of brushing past Conner to his computer. Conner had to speak or else he would forever be the jerk who brought up Tim’s dead dad during his first team lunch.

“I um, wanted to talk to you.” No. That wasn’t right. 

“You are talking to me,” Tim stepped into the room and set his computer bag down by his desk. He leaned over his keyboard and tapped a key to wake up the monitor.

“I mean apologize. I wanted to apologize.” Better. He could still salvage this.

Tim looked up, chin length black hair falling out of his face as blue eyes locked on Conner. He still had that look on his face, cold and empty, like he either wasn’t all there or really didn’t like what he was looking at. It threw Conner off and he stood there, struck dumb, while his brain screamed at him that he needed to talk. Tim waited for an answer.

When it didn’t come he looked back down at his computer screen. 

Conner finally found the pit his voice had fallen into, and hoisted it up using brute strength. 

“I mean-”

“Look its not-”

They both stopped talking, and Tim shook his head so Conner barrelled ahead.

“I didn’t know. But even then, it probably- no, it wasn’t good of me to talk about Mr. Wayne like that.” There. Not his best work, but Conner had meant it. Meant it more than anything. He needed this job, badly. He didn’t want to fuck it up with carelessness.

Tim smiled. It was the first smile Conner had seen outside lunch the other day. But Tim’s smile at lunch had been humorless, almost cruel as he talked about Bruce Wayne as if the man wasn’t his father. Let Conner talk about him. This smile had a softness around the edges that let Conner hope that perhaps he was not doomed.

“He preferred Bruce,” Tim said softly. “He would have told you to call him Bruce.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. You never met him.”

Conner wondered if there was a record for number of times you could fuck up a single apology. He waffled by the door. He felt he needed to say something else, add more, elaborate on it.

Tim sighed. “You didn’t say anything wrong. And whatever they told you about me. Just forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

Tim’s tone was flat and uninflected, and he looked back down at his keyboard instead of meeting Conner’s eyes. It felt disingenuous, at least to Conner. 

“Still I didn’t know him. And I’m sure you didn’t want to spend your lunch talking to some random asshole about it. Especially after I ambushed you on the bus.”

At that Tim looked up again, something unreadable in his eyes. He tilted his head a little, like he was thinking, and then walked over to where Conner stood in the doorway. He held out his hand.

“Then let’s agree never to talk about him- about this again.”

That gave Conner pause, though he wasn’t sure why. This was what he wanted, anyways. A doover. A chance to prove himself without putting his foot in his mouth.

“Sure,” he said gently, “as long as that’s what you want.”

They shook hands. Tim’s hand was just a slip of warmth under his own, and Tim didn’t meet his eyes. He turned away before Conner had even let go, drifting back to his computer. He sat down and didn’t look up again. 

* * *

Conner had a corner desk. Literally, it sat facing two hauntingly blank walls with no windows and peeling cream paint. He hadn’t expected to get the prime office real estate, but the fact they’d shoved him and the rest of the design team into a practical closet did not sit well with him. The ‘Design Den’ they called it, as if a cute name and plushies lining the top shelf of their bookcase made it less insulting.

He looked back at the computer screen, where he had the engine running.

Cassie Sandsmark, the level designer on the project, was packed in on his right with her own desk. While he’d watched her toil away at a rough level layout for a mission she hadn’t yet disclosed details for, Conner had been tasked with simply playing the game as it currently was. They wanted him to get a feel for it before they started tasking him out.

And as it currently was, it was bad. Justice League had always been a game driven by the strength of its individual heroes. The design team pushed the power fantasy at the expense of game balance and character playability and fun over utility. The result was an obnoxiously rabid fanbase, especially where certain characters were concerned. 

The current build internal build featured a lineup of four of the old Titan’s characters that could be summoned by their heroes in the middle of a match. Conner tentatively chose Batman (Superman apparently did not get a sidekick much to his chagrin) and tried to get through matches with bots while he drowned out Cassie muttering at her screen.

Conner had played competitively for a long time, and while he had never favored grapplers or specialist style characters, he still found the shape of the controller reassuring. He simply rode along with the game, getting a feel for the way Batman moved and tumbled through the training levels before trying to call on Robin.

The first thing that popped into his head was that the costume would  _ have _ to go. Batman radioed Robin and a figure in bright red, green, and yellow zipped across the screen, with laughter clearly recorded by a child echoing across the Gotham ambient sounds.

Conner wasn’t sure if there had been a heyday for hotpants he missed, but it at least made him smile while he tried to handle having both characters on screen.

In principle Robin should have worked like just another special ability. 

In practice Conner watched an AI controlled Two-Face make quick work of the pint-size boy. Despite being able to leap like a fucking demon, when Two-Face did land a hit poor Robin went down like a bowling ball. He scowled, and with Robin out, set Batman on him with a rabid ferocity.

This was the problem. 

Robin? Kinda cute in theory. 

In practice what a complete waste of screen space.

He felt a light tap on his shoulder. 

He turned to find Cassie. She smiled up at him with clear lip gloss painted lips. “Meeting in five. Ready?”

“Meeting?”

“You’re first Team Update Meeting,” Cassie said, “It’ll be great.”

Somehow that sounded a lot like she was leading him to the lions. He sighed and followed her and Rachel. The two girls led him across the open floor of the pit, stuffed full of desks and too many monitors to count, towards a room on the far side. He almost thought they were leading him to Tim’s office, but they stopped a door short at another glass encased room. This one held a large conference table and a good chunk of the rest of the team.

Conner slipped in behind Cassie. He found a corner and stood in it, leaving the last open chair for one of the girls. Because he was a gentleman, and not because he found a team full of twenty experienced developers who’d released more games and had more collective experience than the entirety of LexCorp intimidating. Nope.

At the head of the room was a large wall mounted TV hooked up to a stolid desktop computer. Conner watched a young man in a blue hoodie kneel under the tv and fiddle with the connection while the rest of the room kept to an amiably low volume.

The TV booted up, and faded into the level Conner had just been cheesing through. Tim Drake stepped into the room, Stephanie on his heels.

“Alright people,” he said. “We pushed some updates last week, this is just gonna be standar review. If you’ve got any issues bring them up now.”

The room immediately went dead silent.

Now Conner didn’t have a lot of experience, exactly. He’d only ever worked at LexCorp, and Lex Luthor has some very specific ideas about how a company was to conduct themselves. Even so, he’d never seen a group of developers shut up so fast. It was like someone opened a vacuum in the wall and as he looked around his confusion only grew.

Tim Drake didn’t look scary. Sure he’d been kind of an ass the day before, but so had Conner. The way everyone sank in their seats though? Didn’t bode well.

Suddenly the fact he’d gotten the job without meeting the project lead himself felt like foreshadowing and not like the designers had liked him so much they’d rushed him through the hiring process.

Tim took a lazy seat, and nodded to the guy in the blue hoodie. Blue picked up a controller.

* * *

“Robin, do you read?” Batman’s voice came through the speaker and Robin ducked the incoming hit, breathing hard. 

“Yeah, B, I read.”

The thug above him swung wild and wide, and it didn’t take much for Robin to spin, and plant a heel in his chest. The man fell back and another leapt up from behind.

A shadow moved to his left and he heard an ominous click.

Outnumbered and outgunned.

Robin grinned.

To say he savored the violence, took joy in it, would be tantamount to betrayal, as far as Batman was concerned.

But standing a mile above a Gotham skyline, with a man screaming as Robin held him over the edge of the scaffolding, he really couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Fuck Batman, anyways.

* * *

“Wait a second,” Conner said “What’s wrong with Robin?”

Tim watched the room go still. It was almost impressive, the way a room full of adults could shut down. Like someone had come home and told mother about the broken vase.

Like someone had come home and told Bruce-

Tim tilted his head towards Conner though and he smiled despite himself. Conner didn’t have any real spatial awareness, Tim was beginning to realize. Though he seemed intent at the start of the meeting on squeezing himself into the last available corner, once the game had booted up he leant forward over Bart’s shoulder using the younger boy like an armrest while he squinted at the screen.

It was surprisingly endearing the way Conner seemed oblivious to how the whole room had tensed up and watched him.

“He should have been able to dodge that. Did you nerf his quad jump?” Conner asked.

“We needed to retool him. That jump was only good in maps with high verticality and less than four enemies on the field. Play tests were coming back and Robin was dying more than any other character.” Tim said, cool as he had when he’d explained the decision to Cassie.

Conner looked unimpressed and pointed at the screen where Jaime had paused mid leap. 

“Literally that was the only thing fun about playing the character you cannot be serious-“ Conner stopped short. He had turned mid speech to the other designers but Cassie and Rachel were not looking at him. Appearing to realize he was alone for the first time Conner abruptly released Bart’s shoulder and stepped back.

Tim smirked as he watched the man shrink back. 

“Look,” Kory stepped up, and the whole room relaxed. “Let’s just run through this, shall we? We’ll start with art - that looked like you got the new anims in this time?”

The rest of the meeting proceeded as usual, save for Conner. He stood, practically glued to the wall while teams went around giving their updates. Cassie gave the design team update and took down notes for their next tasks.

When it was over with, and everyone had shuffled out, Stephanie sidled up to him.

“Smooth.”

“Shut up,” Tim said. But he couldn’t stop staring at the game, at Conner walking away with Cassie and Rachel on his heels.

“Hey, listen,” Tim turned, and Steph looked more serious than she had since he’d sat her down in his exposed office and told her without flinching Bruce died, “Take it easy on him, ok? And take a break.”

She left, and Tim tried to push away the whisper of a thought about rest and his weekend plans.

* * *

The whole terrible ordeal was excruciating. The weather seemed determined to hover in that particular range of muggy and stagnant that made it impossible to feel dry or to get away from the stench of sweat or rain. Tim hated the feeling of sweating under his clothes. He was already counting the hours until he could be on a train back to Metropolis.

Ahead of him Dick cursed loudly as he got caught up in some bramble. He looked back with sorrowful, puppy dog eyes.

“I think Bruce is torturing us from beyond the grave.” Tim laughed, and reached to help his not-quite-brother out of the mess of mud and thorns.

The trail in Bruce’s will had been located just outside Gotham. It was the closest to true wilderness Tim had ever seen, and while he could still hear the traffic, in their immediate surroundings he saw only skinny trees and rain logged undergrowth.

Damian huffed and shoved past them both. They stood for a moment, watching the younger boy struggle up the narrow path, through the trees and muck and their eyes met.

Damian was taking this harder than he would ever admit. 

“I should be more sensitive,” Dick said quietly.

“I don’t think you were wrong though,” Tim said. His hands had become caked in dirt and dry mud despite his best efforts. “I do think he did this on purpose.”

“That would be just like him,” Dick said, with an insufferable fondness.

Dick reached out, put a hand on his shoulder, and offered a small squeeze of comfort, or maybe solidarity, before they continued their journey up the hill that could have generously been described as a mountain.

The hike took two hours, all told, and only because the heat made it hard for them to hurry without incurring heatstroke. They reached a summit, and despite the fact that Tim had felt from the ground that the “mountain” barely counted, there was indeed an outcropping of rock and enough wind for him to feel like the little summit had earned its title. Well played Bruce.

They gathered around, close enough to the outcropping to do what needed to be done, far enough to not feel like they would topple over. Damian’s face was flushed and running with sweat. The neck of his tank top ever so slightly damp. Dick twisted around, trying to stretch and cool down all at once while Tim worked out the logistics.

“We should maybe stand- here, like this. Don’t want to be downwind when. Well.”

Dick laughed, then covered it up with a cough. “Yeah, I mean. No. That would be terrible.”

Tim hoped for his sake Damian didn’t hear his quiet comment about a mouth full of Brucie.

Tim hesitated with the ashes. The cool surface of the understated urn, a container made more for transport than display, burned at his fingertips. He turned to Damian, who glared at the rocks beneath their feet.

“Do you…?” he held out the urn uncertainly.

He and Damian had never gotten along. Him being the uninvited charity case, Damian being the unwanted one night stand. Damian sniffed, and yanked the urn out of his hands.

“Be careful to-”

“Downwind.  _ I heard _ , Richard, I am not a simpleton.”

Damion took a moment to open the urn. He struggled long enough for it to grow awkward, for Tim to look up and catch Dick smiling sadly, and look away again.

At last, he got it open, and with little ceremony, and without waiting to see if any of them would have something to say, he scattered the ashes into the wind off the side of the cliff.

The ash dispersed gently into the wind, falling more down than anything, little bits of bone toppling. After it dissipated entirely they sat in silence for a few moments.

“I don’t get it,” Dick sighed, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He stared out past the little cliff they stood on, squinting into the sun. Beneath them lay Gotham, a dark smear of a city across the landscape. “Why here? He never mentioned this place before.”

Tim looked at him. Looked at Damian shuffling closer than he had before, and looked out at the perfect view of Gotham City and wished for the first time he had thought to bring his camera. 

It made perfect sense to him.

* * *

The next Monday that Tim arrived at work, he found Conner leaning against his door. Tim smiled behind his coffee. When he saw Tim approaching he straightened up and didn’t give Tim the chance to speak.

“Hey I just wanted to apologize for what I said the other day, that was completely out of line and I had time to think about it-”

Tim held up a hand and appreciated the way Conner immediately snapped his jaw shut. 

“Do you want me to pencil you in or something? If this is going to be a regular occurrence we should probably set a meeting.”

Conner blinked at him, slowly, and then broke into a careful, small smile. “I uh, yeah, I don’t normally apologize this much. By the way. For whatever reason I keep making a real ass of myself here.”

“Did I seem like I was mad, the other day?” Tim asked.

“Is that a trick question?” Conner asked, eyes narrowing behind his dorky, too thick frames.

“No?” Tim said, suddenly thrown off himself.

Conner thought about it for longer than Tim felt was normal. “Then no.”

“Then we’re good,” Tim said, and tried to smile like the fact his whole team thought he would be petty enough to go after a new hire for speaking out didn’t sting just a little.

Conner seemed to sense it anyways. “Hey, just wanted to mention no one like, uh, talked to me, I just wanted to be sure-”

“Conner, you’re a designer. We pay you to design. It’s fine. You don’t know anything about this project yet, you’ve barely been here two weeks. We can talk when you-”

“I mean that’s the thing,” Conner said, cutting Tim off and looking serious again instead of his early nervous energy. “I don’t know much about this project, but I do know what’s fun, Tim that playthrough yesterday was a disaster.”

Tim took a deep breath. Conner was still in front of his door. He couldn’t just run from it this time, much as he wanted to. He could always go back, he supposed.

“Look, I don’t know what the internal decision making process is here, but Graduation Day went over terribly with the Community, if anything, it proved that trying to make the sidekick thing work in JL2 is a waste of time.”

“Graduation Day was pushed out early, and we’ve tweaked the system since then. Robin stopped dying-”

“Yeah I got in early to play your changes, it’s still not fun Tim-”

“Look,” and maybe,  _ maybe _ Tim snapped. Conner recoiled slightly. “I appreciate your passion, and I appreciate your concern. And I hear you, I really do. I know there’s problems with the game, but right now, I need to get to my desk and you’re standing in my way.”

“Sorry,” Conner shuffled awkwardly back.

Tim adjusted his bag and reached to unlock his office door. He paused as he stepped into the room. “We can...we can talk about this like normal people later, ok? Just not right now.”

Conner nodded, but didn’t say anything else, and the next time Tim looked up he was gone.

* * *

Tim had almost been looking forward to the lunch when Kory knocked on his door. Her smile spelled doom. It was sad, the kind of smile you give a kid who hasn’t grasped the concept of mortality yet, when you tell them Fluffy ran away to a better place.

“Hey Tim. Dick wanted to talk to you.”

“I thought he wasn’t coming back until next week?” Tim said, suddenly alarmed. 

Kory levelled a look at him. “You and I both know he’s second only to you in unhealthy coping mechanisms. He’s in his office.”

That didn’t bode well at all. He checked the time. 10:30. He braced himself for the inevitable and figured that people would figure he was being busy and important or something. 

He grabbed his hoodie, a small comfort all things considered, and attempted to slink past the animators without anyone noticing.

Bart looked up, big goofy eyes and a concerned look on his face. Tim waved and slipped into the hall towards the elevator.

Dick’s office was on floor three.

The big floor.

The  _ important  _ floor.

When the doors dinged open again Tim’s senses were immediately awash in a wave of too much. Too much sound first and foremost. The chattering of dozens of devs, the shuffling of chairs, the movement of people across the floor to the break room and back while a game ran on a large TV display to his left and someone laughed just too loudly on his right.

The smell of coffee and someone’s fast food delivery also hit hard, as well as the cool air of the AC, cranked on high to compensate for the pulsating heat of twenty odd high end PCs.

The only thing not overwhelming was the lighting. Floor three kept the lights off and the decoration in neon glowing strips taped under the desks.

Tim took a deep breath to try and get his bearings.

Even though the layout was near identical to his floor, floor three had twice the people. 

Donna waltzed by in galaxy leggings, energy drink in one hand, sour look on her face, a look that softened slightly when she caught sight of Tim.

“Big bird’s in the office.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the direction of Dick’s office.

Tim nodded, trying not to let his momentary lapse show, and stumbled over in that direction.

Dick’s office was a lot like his own. The walls were all paneled glass, allowing anyone to peer into it and view the occupants. Unlike the rest of the office, the lights were on in Dick’s office. His desk sat pressed against the glass facing the world outside. The back of it was lined with stuffed animals, more gifts from Kory. Every available surface had long been covered in stickers and posters. Even the glass in front of him had fallen victim to Dick’s hapless scribbling. Whole networks of what Tim could only assume were behavior trees were scrawled across the glass in a mix of green and blue dry erase marker that sent waves of nostalgia through him.

The door was open, and Dick sat on the edge of his desk. Across from him, at another desk, sat Wally West.

Rather famously Wally had left the studio a couple years ago, only to return at a higher title and higher pay. People didn’t talk about it. People didn’t talk about a lot.

But no bitterness appeared to remain between the two. Wally leaned forward in his chair, eyes locked on Dick as Dick waved an arm.

“I mean, we could technically do it, but we’d have to go in and refactor everyone with an eye projectile.”

Wally grimaced. “Ok first, gross, second,  _ why? _ Why on earth would anyone build it this way?”

“All the core systems were baked into Superman, if you want to beef up Star, you’re going to have to go back into the original system.”

Wally groaned and sank down in his chair. “Somehow this is the art team's fault. Seriously. She did fine without eye beams before. Ah, Dick we have a spy.”

“Hey Wally,” Tim said, and tried not to look uncomfortable with, well everything.

Dick tossed Wally a winning smile. “Why don’t you go pick a fight with Joey. Tim and I need to catch up.”

“Yeah, yeah, bite me.” Wally waved them off, standing, and grabbing a couple empty cans of energy drink off his desk. 

Dick watched him go, still smiling even as Wally disappeared into the labyrinth of desks beyond.

“How’s the game?” Tim asked, in the interest of being polite. It was strange seeing Dick here in the office again so soon, and Tim couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.

“Oh, you know. Three crashes kept popping up yesterday. Couldn’t boot the damn thing. Garth checked in something that made all the heads disappear.”

Tim chuckled despite himself.

Dick still looked tired though. And tired wasn’t a usual look for him. Dick Grayson had once spent a week sleeping on the floor of the office before a release and on the day after they were finished, jumped up and forced them all out to breakfast with indomitable cheer. The way he sagged now and looked over at Tim did not sit naturally.

Even before Bruce’s untimely departure though, Dick really hadn’t been himself. The latest Justice League project had leached some of the color out of his eyes and hair and even though he was barely going on 35, he felt older than Tim by a large margin in that moment.

“Close the door, Tim.”

All hope of this being a good conversation evaporated. Tim hefted the glass door closed and settled into the chair Wally had vacated. Wally’s desk had more funko pops than Tim had ever seen outside a gamestop. He counted them instead of meeting Dick’s eyes.

“So,” Dick said. Then stopped. Then tried again. “Speaking of projects-”

“Everything’s fine.” Tim cut him off. “Everything’s fine. Why are you nosing into this right now? You shouldn’t even be here.”

“Bab’s told me you came back last week. You didn’t think I was actually going to be kept away from Wally, did you?”

There was a crash from the break room next door and a muffled string of curses. Tim sighed.

“Everything really is fine.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing from Kory-”

“I’m sure.”

Kory had been on Dick’s team first. Same with Gar and Vic. There was a loyalty there and Tim wasn’t surprised the others had been talking. It would figure.

No one really trusted Tim with this project anyways.

“Tim,” Dick said, “I’m not trying to attack you but you...you’ve had a really hard year and I think you need to really sit down and think about what you want. You got forced into this position, but we aren’t the same company we were even when we hired you. No one would blame you if we had to cancel the title, or change it-”

“You’re cancelling it?”

“No! No. I don’t have the power to- look the project will go on, with or without you-”

“You’re taking me off the project?”

“I didn’t say that!” Dick ran a hand through his too long hair. He looked frustrated and old and tired and Tim tried not to let the rabbit beating of his heart drive him into a panic. He didn’t want to say something he’d regret. Not to the only person left in his corner.

“Look, Tim, the board has been talking lately, especially now that Bru- well you know. Lucius is keeping things stable, but it’s not just the project board. Queen gets a say too.” 

“Things aren’t where I want them to be, but we aren’t behind-” Tim tried.

“Tim, you’ve been on this project for almost three years and by all accounts internal and external we have nothing to show for it. Queen wants us to cancel the project, and while Lucius is great at talking folks down in those big exec meetings he’s not Bruce.”

“Dick, that’s not fair. Bruce wasn’t protecting my project-” Tim stopped short at the completely wrecked look on Dick’s face.

“I bought you some time. But it comes at a cost. You need to have a working demo ready for Queen in six months.”

“That’s insane.”

“Doesn’t matter. Make something you think they’ll like, that they’ll  _ want _ to sell. And they’ll lay off. Do you think you can do it?”

Tim realized suddenly how tightly he had been holding his fists. He relaxed them, tried to focus on the grain of his jeans or the pattern in the carpet. Anything to calm his whirlwind mind.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ll be in your reviews.” At Tim’s sharp look Dick sighed, “Lucius’ stipulation. The Game Director needs to be in all formal reviews for Project Young Justice from now until demo. I know it doesn’t seem like it. It must seem like I live on another planet, but everyone on my team wants to see your team succeed. One last hurrah for the old game before we launch into the next generation.”

“We’re a glorified DLC patch,” Tim spat.

“You’re doing great. But in six months I can’t protect you from the publisher if they don’t like what they see. You get that, right?”

Tim did. He understood very well.

* * *

Conner had been, quite frankly minding his own business when Tim walked into the kitchen and slammed his coffee down onto the table Conner sat at.

Conner jumped, looked up and opened his mouth, only for Tim to steamroll him.

“Alright, you think the game’s crap? You think Robin’s broken? Fix it.”

“Excuse me?”

“In six months Queen Publishing is going to come in expecting our full demo. We showed them a vertical slice nearly a year ago and they’ve been lenient because of some unfortunate circumstances.” Tim shrugged, clearly he had opinions about those circumstances. “But this is the last expansion for Justice League 2 and they aren’t going to be lenient for long. I have notes from their last visit, Dick Grayson’s going to be in all our reviews, and we have six months to make sure they and everyone else on the executive team like what they see here.”

“Or else what?” Conner asked, leaning forward. “There’s usually an or else in there.”

“Or else nothing-” Tim paused and glanced suddenly at the other’s sitting alongside Conner. It was obvious to Conner that Tim hadn’t actually noticed anyone else in the breakroom, had been solely focused on Conner and Conner’s earlier critique. He sort of grimaced, and took a step back, looking a little less intense. Beside him Cassie looked shaken, and Bart had forgotten that he had been meaning to take a bite of the bagel hovering in front of his open mouth.

Someone laughed. Conner spotted Kory in the doorway, hip popped and amusement painted over her features. “Honey, we have got to soften your opening.”

Tim rolled his eyes. And turned back to Conner. “What are you doing for the rest of the day? Do you think you have time to review some things with me?” 

Conner grinned. “Where do you want to start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man this one was long. 
> 
> I kinda know where this is going. It's gonna be kinda slow, and meandery for a while though. Bear with me. I swear there's romance in this. Eventually.


	3. July

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the weeks since Jason had informally adopted Tim into his social circle at a house party, they’d fallen into an easy sort of pattern. Jason would fix Tim’s broken garbage disposal and Tim would help Jason set up his Linux machine. Jason would be crass and loud and lively and Tim would make snide commentary. Jason would come up with all the fun, wacky ideas, Tim would code them. It worked.
> 
> Actually it did more than work.
> 
> It was awesome.

Metropolis fall was a miserable time of year. It rained, and poorly draining streets saw Tim wading through ankle deep water full of cans and cigarette butts on his way to wherever they were headed.

“Gotham was worse,” Jason said, hopping over the torrent heading down 5th. “Aren’t you a Gotham boy, Timmy?”

“I went to a prep school,” he muttered, just shy of loud enough for Jason to hear.

Jason laughed anyway. In the weeks since Jason had informally adopted Tim into his social circle at a house party, they’d fallen into an easy sort of pattern. Jason would fix Tim’s broken garbage disposal and Tim would help Jason set up his Linux machine. Jason would be crass and loud and lively and Tim would make snide commentary. Jason would come up with all the fun, wacky ideas, Tim would code them. It worked.

Actually it did more than work.

It was awesome.

“God, Gotham this, Gotham that. You guys are insufferable.” Roy pulled the brim of his hat down lower. It did nothing to keep out the rain. It was soaked through and his hair stuck to his face in rusty stripes.

Jason laughed again. 

“What can I say,” he skipped a step to catch up to Roy, footsteps kicking up mud and rain. “Gotham boys do it better. We’re here.”

He threw an arm over Roy’s shoulder, guiding the other boy towards the yellow light spilling out of a nearby doorway.

‘Here’ was a doorway with peeling red paint and the words “The Cave” stencilled onto the glass in glitter. Five different pride flags and a score board of unknown origin or meaning hung in the window and the sound of an uproar could be heard through the frosted glass. Jason threw open the door.

The warm and sweet smell of fries and beer were so inviting Tim slipped inside before the other two could say a word, the need for warmth overriding any inhibitions he would usually have. It took him a second to get his bearings. He ran a hand through his hair, tried get some of the excess water out of his eyes, and looked around.

The front of the small bar Jason had brought them too held a case overflowing with board games. Monopoly, Star Trek Trivia, Pandemic, indie games with cool art and slick cards, large old games with missing pieces. Tim’s brain immediately tried to catalogue it all, sorting through the ages and rarity of the various titles as Jason and Roy stumbled in behind him.

A small jar sat on the shelf beside the games, labelled “Rental Fee” and crumpled bills and coins filled it about half way.

The rest of the room was taken up by tables. Most looked like repurposed picnic tables, and a long bar serving all manner of drink and food ran along the back wall.

And last but not least, completely covering the left side wall of the bar was a row of pinball machines packed in side by side. The racket and clanging and sounds of people cheering over the machine closest to the bar sent Tim’s head spinning.

He reached for Jason. 

“I didn’t know this was a bar,” he said, grasping at a wet coat sleeve, and missing.

“Where’d ya think we were going?”

“I’m not 21.”

Roy snorted. “Kid, you need to relax.”

Roy shucked off his jacket and hung it on a coat rack by the door already weighed down with some twenty odd jackets. 

Crowds thronged around the homey bar and ringing machines. Tim shrunk closer to Jason, who grinned and reached out to wrap an arm over Tim’s shoulders as he led him to a calmer corner. A place hung with shadows and a lone machine.

“Relax. I promise you’ll like it here. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Fuck! Shit!” The woman kicked the machine in the corner so hard the frame jerked into the plywood behind it. Jason cackled and the woman behind the bar shouted.

“Hey! Don’t take it out on the machine!”

“Sorry, sorry,” the woman said, too low for her to hear. She glared at the pinball machine, then turned her attentions to Jay who had sidled up with Tim tucked under his arm.

The woman was tall, wearing a white t-shirt that fit perfectly over tanned toned arms. She looked like she could crush Tim’s skull about as easily as she had hip checked the 200 pound machine.

“Hey hotshot, wanna try?” She asked, quarters glinting in her hand as she looked at Jay.

“Hey, princess. This is Tim. Tim. Artemis Grace. Don’t let her natural charm fool you. She’s the head of the Women in Computer Science Club at Met U. A thoroughbred nerd with a chip on her shoulder.”

“Damn straight. If this bar becomes any more of a sausage fest I’m staging an uprising.”

“Also the one who got us the key to Lab 29.”

“I owe you my CS 131 grade then,” Tim said, still not sure if he should be looking at Artemis and her terrifying arms, or Jason and his terrifying grin.

“Oh. Yikes. Did you have Digby for 131?”

Tim nodded.

Artemis’ features softened. “Well if you survive, you’ll be able to coast till your capstone. Digby is a weed out class. They use it to fail the people who can’t make the cut.”

Tim nodded. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing here, in this place, with these people. Jason had become a staple in his life, quickly and calmly, but this was…

He turned to take in the mass of people, the loud 80s music, the group in the back with a map spread across two tables full of miniature terrain and felt part of himself shift. There was a shout to his right and the ringing sound of a victory as someone slammed on the machine closest to the bar. He looked to see a young man with a shock of bright green hair and a red bomber jacket grinning broadly as he jumped up to high five a dark haired man in a blue hoodie.

“Garfield Logan and Dick Grayson,” Jason’s voice was warm against his ear and Tim jumped back.

Jason grinned. He was holding a drink he hadn’t had before.

“Want to meet them?”

* * *

Tim had been brave before. He must have been, because otherwise he wouldn’t be in the mess he was in now. Something about Dick always seemed to set him off.

A wedge had been jammed into place, slowly, with aching precision, that not even Bruce’s death could loosen. It fed a thorny rebellious streak that led him to the office at six AM.

He’d driven instead of taking the bus. He had to remember the code for disarming the building twice after waving his badge in front of the sensor.

The air in the office was always eerie before dawn. The sun was quickly rising but the office motionless felt simply alien compared to the movement and life that normally inhabited the space. Bart’s desk didn’t feel right without him waving around mimicking barn anim and Jaime’s place felt empty without him cursing the game out under his breath.

Tim hopped on his computer. He had two hours before the insane early birds showed up and four before the work day really started. If he wanted to actually get this thing done, he’d need to make sure the team was on the same page. That Conner, a small voice that sounded a lot like Stephanie said, was equipped to help to the best of his ability to allow the project to succeed.

* * *

Tim almost forgot why it was the original Sidekicks expansion was reviled. Then Robin died for the third time.

“What the  _ fuck-” _

“I know, right? Batman should take better care of his Robins.”

He looked up. Conner Kent stood in his office doorway.

He held up a break room coffee cup.

“Peace offering?”

“I really should book us a meeting. I don’t know what you’re apologizing for but accepted.”

Tim held out a hand for the coffee.

Conner handed it over and stepped into the office. He looked around, taking in the glass and empty desk, and eventually settled in Jason’s old chair. Tim’s stomach swooped without permission and he wrestled the feeling down. 

“Nice place.”

“Thanks. Came with the promotion.”

They sat in awkward silence for a moment. Conner stared at the wall instead of Tim and Tim pretended he wasn’t sitting in the chair of a ghost.

“So,” Conner said again, then grinned a little lopsided when Tim turned to look at him, “I guess I should apologize again.”

Tim held up a hand. “You.” He said, “Should stop apologizing when you don’t mean it.”

A funny silence passed between them, and Conner just grinned again and leaned forward. “Alright. Fair point. You told me yesterday I needed to fix this game. What does that mean?”

Tim shrugged a little tired and worn thin and amused. “You tell me. You’re the designer.”

“I figure we got another hour before the rabble arrive. Come on. Tell it to me straight. What’s the deal?”

Tim sighed and stared at the computer. “Do you remember the sidekicks expansion for Justice League 1?”

Conner gave a derisive snort.

“Right. Good. Because this project? Young Justice? This is the sidekicks expansion for Justice League 2. We don’t call it that, but that’s what it is.”

“Why would you guys do this to yourselves.” Conner shook his head sadly. “I liked Titans.”

“Everyone liked Titans. No one liked Sidekicks. Even though they all love having Nightwing and Cyborg and Flash 2.0 in the core League lineup.” And maybe Tim still held a little bitterness in his heart for the fact Dick Grayson had swept in and taken all the credit for that, and then swept out leaving Jason and Tim to hack together an expansion they believed in but that no one wanted. Maybe.

“So Graduation Day?”

“Was an early testbed for reintroducing sidekicks into the game.”

“No one liked Graduation Day.”

“No,” Tim said. “I guess no one did.”

* * *

The team managed to get themselves crowded in and around Tim’s office in a presentable fashion by around 10:30. By then Tim had, after some initial awkwardness, convinced Conner to give JL1 a couple of spins, using Batman and Robin and the old Sidekicks expansion.

“Robin is actually the worst,” he said, but he laughed even as Riddler killed him via shrinking puzzle room. 

“The old Riddler design is my favorite,” Tim said, and tried not to bask in the strange warm funny nostalgia that threatened to wash over him every time Conner turned to look at him and told him “that was an absolute dumpster fire”.

“I kind of get why you love it,” he said, and it didn’t sound forced. Tim almost explained that he hadn’t loved it. That JL1 was bad and Sidekicks ill-advised. He had simply been too young to know better at the time. Faced with an empty room and a cool machine Robin had been a lifeline not a poorly executed marketing gimmick. 

Tim had fallen in love not with Robin as he was, but the idea of it. And that nostalgia had carried him forward into an entire career. A career whose end he was currently staring down.

He almost forgot what he was here to do. What he got into the office early to do.

By the time the whole team had shuffled in, and Conner had set aside the game to instead lounge in Jason’s old chair, Tim had to actually force himself to get to the point.

“So,” he said, “I’m sure you’re all aware of our upcoming demo with Queen in six months.”

The team mumbled, and Bart’s hands danced across the back of his chair while they waited for the bomb.

“I know it may seem silly to say, but this milestone is important. Queen can sink this project if they feel like they don’t like what they’re watching. Last time we met, the feedback was...not good.”

“The game was too slow, the sidekick mechanic was unintuitive, and there wasn’t any reason for players to pick up a sidekick in the first place.Even with our current tweaks, thanks Cass, Steph, Bart, these characters are still, as Conner so eloquently pointed out, not fun.”

Cass, Steph, and Bart had perked up at the mention of their efforts, and Conner had the decency to look mildly embarrassed for his tone. Dumpster fire it may have been, but Steph had wrangled a lot of bullshit legacy code and Bart had worked absolute magic to get Robin into his current state.

“So.” Tim said. “That’s it.”

A moment of silence passed over the crowd before Gar coughed awkwardly.

“Great speech, Tim,” he said, “So uh?”

Tim sighed. “Look, we’re running out of time and options. We’re supposed to be a team. We need to make sidekicks fun. We’ve got assets, we’ve got programmers, I’m asking for your help this time.Yesterday was… yesterday was all I’ve got.” 

Tim stopped because he didn’t know how to explain it further. Didn’t know how to wind the team up and get them working. When Jason had been there, he’d had a way of selling people on the vision and setting them down a path for better or ill. Instead Tim shut his mouth.

“Cassie, Rachel, and I can meet after this and put together some proposals. If we get really excited we might even prototype it,” Conner said, easy as anything. “Right?”

Kory clapped. “I’ll come with. We’ll talk timing. Tim when-”

“Two week sprints?” Tim asked. “Let’s get something we can actually look at. Move from there?”

Everyone seemed satisfied. There was nodding, general mumbling, and slowly the crowd dispersed.

Conner clapped him on the shoulder and shot him the smile that had originally gotten Tim’s attention at the bus stop.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.”

“If you guys need any tools or engine support-”

“Don’t  _ worry. _ We got it.”

A soft squeeze, and Conner was off after Cassie and Gar.

As the team filed out Tim let the strings holding up his professional demeanor dissolve and sank into the chair. He found his head in his hands and his thoughts spiraling down the drain.

He knew the project wasn’t where Dick wanted it to be, but it wasn’t bad. It had never been bad. He hadn’t been expecting Dick to try and yank the rug out from under him. So soon after Bruce’s death, it hardly felt real. Bouncing from mourning, from trading sad smiles and stares at the manor to this. To the fucking grind of another day, another broken game, another deadline to hit.

Tim needed this project.

“Hey. You’d tell me if something was going on, right?” Stephanie stared at him, with the softness of a concern driven by years of navigating Tim’s worst parts. Tim tried to smile.

Even if they pulled him off this project, he would at least leave knowing that the people on his team would be fine. Dick would make sure they had jobs. They’d be great.

“Yeah Steph. You’d be the first to know.”

* * *

Tim found it unsettlingly hard to focus. He found he couldn’t go back to the game and map it out the way he wanted to and took to wandering the office, trying to realign his thoughts.

Jaime Reyes was kind of weird. Granted, Tim thought most of the team was weird. But Jaime had a consistent habit of swearing at his game in spanish and then turning to the person next to him (often Virgil or Stephanie) and throwing his hands like they were supposed to know what was wrong.

For legal reasons they couldn’t call Jaime their embedded tester, but he’d moved up in the QA department in the last couple years and was the only senior tester on their floor.

Despite his multilingual habit of arguing with himself, Jaime had an engineering background, which was why Tim had nabbed him from where he’d previously been logging bugs for the live team on the first floor. Someone like Jaime was wasted there.

Jaime, Conner, and Cassie crowded around Jaime’s desk. Jaime had two monitors, one held the bug dashboard, a log of all the problems Tim wanted to forget, and the other held the game. Jaime’s smile had turned smug as the little trio crowded around.

Tim slowed his stroll towards the coffee machine to hang back and just observe them. Maybe, a part of him, a little too invested in what Conner might say or think without Tim’s position hanging over him.

“Alright, stand back and prepare to be amazed.” Jaime cracked his knuckles, and then leaned forward.

The clacking of keys followed, and his audience held still, and silent. When the typing continued just long enough to grow uncomfortable he heard Jaime chuckle nervously.

“Just, uh, sorry, that normally works, let me, here I need to, I thought I had that CVAR turned off I-”

Jaime said something in Spanish, and Tim smiled to himself. He couldn’t see Jaime’s face, but he could just make out the screen over his shoulder. As Jaime scrambled across the keys, clicking something, Tim saw Conner turn to Cassie, elbowing her a little with the kind of grin that spoke mainly of amusement and not in a mean spirited way.

“Ah, got it, here.”

And Jaime kicked back, chair rolling a few feet to allow Conner to step forward and look at the game.

Tim felt his heart stop. On screen was a figure in a red billowing cape.

“Gotta love those cloth physics,” Conner said, spinning the character around and watching the cape flutter in simulated gravity. “So tell me why it took you thirty minutes to pull up Superman?”

“It’s not Superman,” Tim stepped forward.

Conner jumped about a foot. “Jesus you’re quiet. Has anyone told you that?”

“A few people.” Tim tried not to feel satisfied as the others shrank back when he stepped forward. Except, of course, Conner, who grinned, and stayed in the way just long enough for Tim to sigh and reach around him. He pulled up the editor.

“Conner, Superboy Prime, Superboy Prime, Conner.”

“Prime?”

“He’s a copy of Superman. I’m sure you’ve heard by now- but around here, Big Blue is kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, I mean, he  _ is _ the best,” Conner puffed his chest out a little with a grin, “competitively speaking.”

“Right, well, he’s also a fucking nightmare-”

“I take offense-”

“By all means. Superman was the first, and because he was the first there’s a lot of stuff that got hard coded into him that...very much should not have. Anytime we touch the game we have to putz around in Supes’ codebase too. There are a lot of systems that basically live on him as a character. Superboy Prime was… a valiant attempt at fixing that-”

“He’s basically a dev tool,” Jaime interrupted. “Tim resurrected him a couple years back after finding him buried in an old directory. Before that he was just someone’s shitty Superman clone. Now you can basically prototype any power in the game on him without actually, you know, breaking the game.”

“For what it’s worth,” Tim said, mildly embarrassed for the game's architecture, “as annoying as this is, they aren’t making the same mistakes with JL3. We’re just suffering cause we’re working on ten year old code.”

Conner, now looking more fascinated by Superboy Prime, reached out for the mouse. Tim watched him play with the exposed variables, while spinning the character around. 

“Interesting.” Conner said, while Superboy Prime sped up, flying across the viewport in a blur. “You made this?”

“It was already in engine. I just made it slightly more useful. And even then, barely. He’s kind of useless for anything other than goofing off.” Tim sighed, watching Conner up Prime’s strength and send him through a skyscraper.

“Still. Could be useful.”

Tim didn’t know much about that, but he left them to figure it out on their own. He’d asked for their help and now he’d have to trust them to deliver.

* * *

In the end Tim spent all his time working on Robin. Because of course he did. Because this stupid project had started with Robin, and Tim had never really gotten over the fact that their first attempt to put the character back in the game had ended in such disaster.

Robin was supposed to be a treat. Players were supposed to have been excited for the character to appear in the main title. Instead, fans of Nightwing were furious, fans of JL1 reminded everyone that the character had been garbage, and Tim and Jason’s first attempt to bring him back had been ground into dust under the most reviled patch in JL2, Graduation Day.

Current Robin would fix all that. Or he was supposed to. Conner’s critique hadn’t been misplaced. He was effective, sure, but he wasn’t fun to play. Gone were the silly animations and jokes recorded ten years ago by some dev’s son.

The current Robin was different. The current Robin didn’t fly around the map like a bouncy ball, he had more weight. Slower movement with more power, a higher armor rating.

He wasn’t fun, but there was something viciously powerful feeling about punching Joker’s face in. And if maybe the version Tim kept on his home PC used Jason’s voice lines and old code, well, there was no harm in that. It almost made it more satisfying.

“So I know why I’m here...why are you here?”

Tim’s head jerked back, knocking his headphones loose. He could hear Robins, no, Jason’s voice, coming out of the speakers and turned it down. Conner leaned in the doorway to his office, and Tim almost asked what he meant, but realized the lights in the office were all out, and no one was still at their desks. He dared a peak at his clock. 

9:30.

Fine. It’s not like he had a date. 

“Just trying to get Robin in a better place. You’re right, he’s not fun. But he was getting killed every round before we made him not fun, so you can see how I’m in a bit of a pickle here.”

And maybe it came out a tiny bit testy, but Conner just grinned again, like he found Tim’s general inability to be a polite human being funny instead of off putting.

“You can fix Robin tomorrow. We should get out of here. The bus stops at 10 on Fridays.”

“Is it Friday already?”

“You don’t get out much, do you?”

Tim looked up. Conner was still grinning. “You know, for someone who seemed sure I was going to fire them about twenty four hours ago, you are being awfully annoying.”

“Maybe I figure if you didn’t fire me yet, I’m probably safe.”

Tim decided not to answer that, but Conner’s grin didn’t fade as he reached down and started packing his bag. He grabbed his coffee, stared at the game for just a moment too long, and then locked his screen.

Conner made space for him, and together they walked out of the office, turning off the lights by the front desk as they stepped into the cool summer night air.

* * *

The lab was hidden away on the second floor of one of the older CS buildings.

“Lab 29. A place full of history, and love, and programmer sweat.” Jason swept his arms around the room, towards the empty server rack and the four out of date PCs sitting unused on the back corner. Posters for Justice League had been plastered across the walls, and a half dozen empty energy drinks sat precariously close to the edge of a table where the only three people in the room worked diligently.

“Used to be a grad student Lab, but we coopted it after Biz got into the AI research program or whatever that Professor Dox is running.”

Artemis and Roy sat across from each other, each with their own laptop. Roy had his hooked up to an extra monitor and a pen tablet plugged into his USB port. Artemis was curled over her own PC, and looked up when they came in, but started ignoring them when Jason dipped into his “show” voice.

Tim didn’t have a better word for the peculiar way sometimes Jason could be Jason and other times Jason could be Jason but  _ more _ somehow. Like now, as he explained to Tim how the years of programmer was actually what made the lab special, and that if a janitor ever did try and clean the lab the good luck it brought would break.

“The first JL team worked in here, you know. They were dropouts of our very own computer science department.”

“I’m honored,” Tim said, still not positive he would want to sit down on any of the available surfaces.

“Just shut up and sit down, short stuff.”

Tim did. Somehow it felt embarrassing, childish to be working on the project he and Jason had started together, when there were other people around. In the privacy of his own room, or at least semi-privacy of Ives not being a CS major, he could pretend that his fanciful little project was something worth putting time into. As opposed to a half thought through mod that would almost certainly get his account banned. Again.

With Artemis swearing in the background he tried to just burn through some of his homework and hoped Jason would be content enough with the fact Tim was here of his own free will, in this space that screamed Jason and and Artemis and Roy and had very little in it Tim could latch onto for comfort.

Tim nearly yelped when the lights shut off.

“Fucking sensors.”

When the lights turned back on, Artemis was standing on her chair, fist raised and waving. She dropped into her chair without another word. Tim sank further in his own seat, and when he dared look across the desk at where Jason was sitting, the other boy smirked at him.

* * *

Conner was at the bus stop. Tim almost spit out his coffee but managed to recover and even smile as the human labrador retriever half jogged over to him.

“Hey!” he said. “Happy Monday.”

“Happy Monday,” Tim raised his coffee and tried not to admire the way Conner looked a little breathless and warm from standing in the morning sun. 

“How was your weekend?”

“Fine.” Hunched over a laptop, Tim had forgotten to go grocery shopping, and had to run to the Starbucks across the street for his coffee, which left him disgruntled and feeling like he’d put his shoes on backwards or something equally ridiculous. “Yours?”

“My family hosted a barbeque. I think I ate enough to last me the week, you know?”

Tim didn’t but he tried to smile and act like he cared as Conner launched into a rambling description of the events of the barbeque. Tim tried to follow, but lost it somewhere between the names Clark and Chris and Jimmy and James and hoped Conner wouldn’t be quizzing him later. 

Conner didn’t really seem to mind though, and mostly talked to fill the air as the bus pulled up.

“Normally we all take a big trip out to Smallville in the summer to visit Ma, that’s Clark’s folks, but we’ve been putting it off so Jon doesn’t miss his games.”

“Don’t put it off too long. Things are only going to get busier at work, you probably should take your vacation now.”

Conner paused and Tim winced. That had been bad. That had sounded cold and like Tim thought that Conner should be chained to his desk or something. He was on his way to correcting himself, but the doors hissed open, and Conner just shrugged.

“I’ll see about convincing them to take a trip before we start hitting crunch.”

“Kory will kill me if I work you to death, don’t worry,” Tim said as they stepped on the bus.

“Yeah, she’s a bit scary, huh?” Conner said, but he sat next to Tim while they rode into work, so Tim assumed he was forgiven his social awkwardness.

* * *

Conner disappeared into the design office as soon as they arrived at work. It didn’t feel like a dismissal. Conner had thrummed with energy on the bus.

“I have a few ideas I want to try today. If I find anything promising, I’ll come show you.”

So Tim let him go.

He wound up throwing himself into Robin instead. Jason’s scribbles across the glass a reminder of their original intent. Of what Robin could be.

* * *

There was something powerful about being Superman. Prime cut across the screen and obliterated several buildings as Robin tried desperately to work around the shadowy movements of Batman, dodging and weaving. 

Sadly not fast enough. Robin caught a blast of Prime’s heat vision to the chest and went careening backwards.

“Fuck you, Conner.”

“Be better,” Conner crowed and Cassie pushed herself away from the computer to go sulk.

“Don’t be like that! That was better than last time.”

“Yeah well, if the point of today was to test my patience, you’re doing great.”

Conner set the game aside and offered Cassie a more serious apology. “No. Look, thank you. I just wanted to see how flexible this thing was. I mean, this game, working on it is a dream, I want to make sure the first proposal we drag in front of Tim doesn’t get us wailed on for dumb ideas. I think I’ve got something I can work with.”

“Yeah, well,” Cassie shrugged, but already was warming up. Conner could work that Kansas boy charm. When he wanted. “Tim’s a bit of an ass about this all anyways.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He...he can’t see the forest for the trees sometimes, you know?”

Conner nodded even though he wasn’t sure he did.

“What are you thinking anyways. How do we save Robin?”

“I think we’re gonna need to rethink the whole sidekick thing in general, retool them as proper heroes.”

“Yeah well, good luck with that. We’ve tried it. It never sticks.”

* * *

Sometime around noon Conner ventured out of the design cave. At first he had felt insulted by design’s apparent position as the unwanted step child. Hidden away in a corner, relegated to polishing levels while Tim apparently had overseen the redesign of the main characters himself, it felt an awful lot like they were being shunned.

However, a closed office away from the rest of the team also meant that Conner had been able to experiment all day, with Tim none the wiser. While Tim’s glass walls made it impossible for the other man to really hide, the nature of the design den meant that Conner had basically spent the day breaking everything Tim had built and then some. Honestly it had been wildly fun. More fun than his first few days tweaking levels and getting Robin killed.

He was beginning to like the cave.

Venturing out of it, he was surprised to find a decent sized lunch crowd shuffling around and throughout the breakroom.

Being new, Conner still found himself floating in that awkward space between feeling like he should go out to socialize with all his new coworkers, and wanting to curl up in the corner farthest from everyone else and hide. He couldn’t remember if the black haired guy at the fridge was Kyle or Freddie and or if he was supposed to already be able to tell the four different blondes who worked on their floor apart. He looked for the few faces he did recognize and latched on to them, floating over towards the open fridge to snag his lunch while Cassie started up a conversation at the kitchen counter with the one of those other blondes, Stephanie from the looks of it.

Tim stood nearby, carefully chopping an apple into bite sized slices. Conner tried to catch his eye at first, but was ignored.

“Are you excited?” Stephanie asked. She seemed calmer, older than Cassie somehow, and wore soft faded sweaters and chucks while sipping on a smoothie.

Cassie snagged her own lunch down from a high shelf.

“Totally. It’s like, one of the three good things about working here. That and the Superman statue.”

Conner’s ears perked up, but he still didn’t have an in or any idea what they were talking about. He took his lunch and tried to, as subtly as he could, step his way around Cassie and her friend.

Her friend looked up, eyes sharp, and Conner thought he recalled her from his first interview. Part of the engineering department. Whip smart and brutal with the technical questions. Also she seemed to be Tim’s minder in all his meetings.

“Conner,” she said, all smiles, “Are  _ you  _ excited?”

“Oh yes. Very. Always excited. More excited than anyone. What are we excited about?”

“Company beach party is in two weeks. You signed on at a good time. It’s free alcohol, endless shrimp, and a reserved spot on a private beach. Gar always gets wasted and tries to give a speech.”

“Sounds fun,” Conner said. And it did. His last company excursion had been an awkward team building exercise that ended with him and Karen agreeing to never talk about it again. “I’ll be sure to work on my beach bod in the meantime.”

Somewhere between the hours at the office, and the commute, and watching Jon every other Thursday. Maybe.

“What about you, Tim?” Stephanie said suddenly, head snapping around.

Conner couldn’t help looking too. Tim’s knife hit the cutting board with a resounding thunk and he looked up. He looked confused, more than anything, at the question, and his eyes flitted over to Conner briefly before going back to Stephanie.

“Excited?” He said slowly, like the concept was foreign to him.

“Yes Tim. Excited. For the beach party.”

Tim looked away, like he was seeing something, or having some kind of internal argument. It was kind of funny how Conner could watch him fight with himself. He wondered if everyone else saw it, or if he was just weird for noticing. At last Tim looked up, and he looked at Conner again, but it was so fast it could have been him imagining things.

“Not really.”

“Tim-”

“I’m going, I’m going. I already promised Dick I would. Don’t worry.”

“We’ll get some color on you yet,” Steph said with a wink.

“Try and I will drown you.”

Conner watched the exchange, watched Tim duck out of the kitchen to take his lunch at his desk, and watched the girls sit down at a table full of animators. He joined them a moment later.

And if he maybe, discreetly, messaged Clark to ask about their dates for going out to Smallville, that was totally fine. Who wouldn’t want to attend their first party at the new workplace?

* * *

The first week leading up to their review with Tim passed in relative harmony. Conner began to get the lay of the land, so to speak.

Victor Stone (“Call me Vic,”) was always in early. His roommate and the associate producer attached to their group was Garfield Logan and he was  _ never _ in early. Conner got to know Vic and the other early risers pretty well over the course of a week and a half and found the morning crew oddly comforting. They were mostly engineers and had a way of looking like they’d never left the building.

Cassandra Cain was quieter than Vic, and it took Conner three full attempts at talking to her to realize she was deaf, and even then it was only because Vic had watched him from across the kitchen and made several obvious, repeated motions towards his ears that Conner failed to recognize until Cass brushed her hair back and he saw the hearing aids for himself.

“I’m an asshole.”

“No, you’re unobservant,” Vic said with a grin. “That’s not a crime. But it will get you in trouble.”

The rest of the team was louder. Conner naturally fell in with the design team. Though Rachel Roth, their senior narrative designer, was quiet, she had an incredible intuitive grasp of narrative structure and how to put a group of disparate mechanics and assets together to convey an emotion. She’d also been supportive of Conner’s push to pull the sidekicks out, and had helped him with his pitch.

“I still think Tim is going to kill you. He’s really into the whole sidekick schtick.” Cassie’s bubblegum popped in his ear.

The design crew ate lunch with the art crew, which consisted of Kyle and Megan, both of whom were overly welcoming of Conner’s bumbling attempts at lunch conversation, and Bart who was, well.

Cassie winced as Bart jumped up on the lunchroom table and attempted to contort himself in a way that looked, frankly, painful.

“Is that Mr. Miracle’s moveset?”

“He thinks it’s broken and has been begging someone to let him fix it since, oh, forever,” Cassie said, looking amused and exhausted all at once.

All in all, Conner was finally feeling at home at Waynetech. It wasn’t quite the warm welcome he had hoped for, but there was an easy camaraderie among the team that even the seemingly insurmountable task of making Sidekicks cool again couldn’t quash. Which was probably why he went into the review overconfident.

* * *

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard me out,” Conner said. He followed as Tim ducked out of the meeting room. Was this man really  _ running?  _ Conner wanted to throw something.

“There’s nothing to discuss. The whole point of Sidekicks is the sidekick mechanic. You can’t make them fully featured heroes, try again.”

“We can make them fully featured heroes, and narrative can write a bit about why they’re on their own and presto bingo, all of our problems are solved.”

“No.” Tim spun around. “I don’t know what you don’t get about this, we’ve already tried this. Multiple times even. It defeats the point. I know what you’re asking and I’m telling you it won’t happen. Try again.”

Conner wanted to say something. He really did. But when he opened his mouth he found his anger had short circuited his voice and mostly gaped. Tim spun on his heel and slammed the bathroom door. Conner stared.

Someone cleared their throat.

“For what it’s worth,” Bart crouched at the end of the hall, watching the whole thing curiously. “You aren’t wrong.”

It didn’t make him feel better.

* * *

Tim stood over the sink, letting the cold water clear his head. Despite trying to be careful, it dripped onto his shirt, leaving his neckline wet and awkward. He heard the bathroom door open and close.

“Hey there, big shot.”

Stephanie Brown leaned up against the bathroom door, head cocked, face cool and unreadable.

“This is the men’s room.”

“Silly me.”

Tim grabbed more than the necessary number of paper towels, scrubbed his face raw, and pushed his bangs out of his face.

“You’re being an ass.”

“You know why we can’t do that.”

“He’s not wrong.”

Tim sighed and sent her his best level look. In the battle of wills between them, Tim had never yet won. But they’d also never gone head to head about something he truly cared about. Something he wouldn't budge for.

“I didn’t say he was.”

Stephanie sighed. Her face broke a little, softening, and she stepped forward. She slipped her arm around Tim’s and tugged gently. “Come on, before my patience runs out.”

“Your patience with me is endless, Stephanie.”

“I am truly your saving grace and the only reason your employees haven’t staged a revolt. You should promote me.”

“We can discuss it in your one on one.”

She smiled and Tim felt lighter.

* * *

Bart Allen was a force of kinetic nature. He moved through spaces like a cartoon caricature of a human being. He explained his points with expressive body language and punctuated it with explosive movements. Talking to him felt like watching a movie, or an actor, or someone possessed.

“Gotta give you credit, folks don’t normally like going toe to toe with our resident dark and lonely project lead.”

“Does he always try to bite the heads off new designers?” Conner asked, following Bart back out into the art pit. Most everyone else had dispersed back to their respective desks post-meeting and Conner tried not to let his public failure burn.

“Only the good ones,” and Bart managed to use his whole face to wink.

“Good to know I’m not special.”

“You aren’t, but,” And Bart took the pause to drop into his desk chair, kicking violently so he went careening into the desk next to him. He bumped into Kyle who sent him a dirty look as he was physically jerked away from his tablet. Bart ignored him, leaning forward and raising a hand so he could mock whisper conspiratorially. “you’re kind of hitting all his buttons though.”

“I noticed.” Conner dropped like a weight into an empty chair beside Bart’s desk.

“It’s not your fault,” Bart’s upper body swiveled as he scanned the room. Kyle kicked his chair back towards his desk, and Bart took it in stride, hardly swaying as he rolled back towards Conner. He leaned forward again. “The last time they tried to split the sidekicks into their own characters, Tim got totally railed on.”

_ “Why?” _

Bart shrugged, slumping into his seat fully. He threw his arms out in a sort of over exaggerated shrug. “Why? Who knows, really. But it was a huge fight between Dick and Jason.”

“Which one is Jason?”

“Bart.” Jaime’s head popped up from over Bart’s monitor, eyes flashing in alarm.  _ “Dude.” _

“It’s fine ‘migo, Tim and I are totally cool.” Bart looked around like it probably wasn’t fine and then lowered his voice again. “Jason was the previous lead designer. He had this whole vision for the project to pull the sidekicks into their own heroes. It’s uh, probably why Tim is reacting so poorly.”

“If more than one designer is telling Tim the kids need to be promoted, maybe he should listen.”

“Jason is dead.” Kyle cut in. “He died and the pitch died with him. Bart don’t be an ass.”

Bart sighed. “Whatever, whatever! You guys all suck.”

“What are you doing?” Kory’s voice, sweet as sugar, said right in Conner’s ear. He jumped and turned and after taking a look at the artists, all of whom suddenly found their screens very interesting, and decided he knew when to retreat.

* * *

Dick Grayson was beautiful.

Full and lovely and the type of warmth that spoke of family and fearlessness. Tim almost couldn’t stand it. He also couldn’t look away. Staring wasn’t healthy but Tim had always been a bit of a voyeurs. Not by choice maybe but still.

Jason fit naturally alongside Dick, whose other arm rested around the waist of the most beautiful woman Tim had ever seen. 

And Tim, Tim waved awkwardly, and tried not to regurgitate the wiki page under Dick’s name when he held out a hand.

“Nice to meet you, Tim.”

* * *

Tim didn’t do beaches. He didn’t do sun, generally. Starting around when he discovered computers he had resigned himself to becoming a creature of the night. His circadian rhythm had been permanently disfigured by over fifteen years of staring directly into a bright screen for over 12 hours a day.

Jason used to tease him about it, when they stepped out of the computer lab and Tim squinted down at the sidewalk.

“Cavedweller.”

Now he simply sagged in the seat of the party bus. Stephanie sat on the aisle, protecting him from the brunt of the noise and social expectations of decorum. He hid behind his shades and clutched his waterproof, fully sealed beach bag which absolutely held his laptop and Stephanie could take it from his cold dead hands.

The bus was loud. They hit a pothole and Bart swore as his head hit the ceiling. Someone laughed. Jaime started cursing. Kyle drew dicks on the window in dry erase marker and the programmers who took up the back of the bus, mainly Cass and Vic and Virgil, had cracked open a bottle of whiskey to share between them. Tim knew because Cass had not so subtly tried to pawn some off on him.

It was nice. All of this was nice. He wasn’t enjoying it but...

If he leaned back and closed his eyes and let the vibrations of the seat lull him into a false sense of safe then he could almost imagine liking this. Enjoying this the way he was told he was supposed to.

Dick sat at the front of the bus, already two beers in and didn’t meet his eyes.

* * *

“Sunscreen?”

“Slathered.”

“Charger?”

“We’re at full battery.”

“Beer?”

Tim raised his bottle from where he lay half reclined across one of those beach chairs you only saw in commercials about housewives. He slapped the cooler next to him as Steph stood and stretched and fully discarded her ratty t-shirt.

“You’ll have to return to me anytime you want to refuel,” Tim said.

“I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

Tim let himself really relax now. Sure the sound of the sand and surf crashed through his head, and smell of the beach was impossible to ignore, but Steph left him lounging in a beach chair in the shade and suddenly the whole idea of the trip didn’t seem so ill advised. It almost seemed fun, watching her bounce off through the sand. She ducked under their VIP divider and sprinted to where the few adventurous engineers had gathered at the shore line, ankle deep in the ice-cold Atlantic.

Conner was there, broad tan back glistening in the sun as muscle moved under skin in that way that could easily distract Tim from his own thoughts. Almost mechanical, like he could peel back the layers and see how the machine was put together.

He turned and flipped on his shades to keep from staring and ignored the sounds of Dick challenging Wally to a volleyball game.

* * *

Conner had a secret talent for volleyball. In particular he seemed adept at sending the esteemed, athletic, and reigning champion of the unofficial summer beach party volleyball tournament into the sand face first, as he spiked the ball into the sand off of Bart’s serve. Dick’s dive for it turned into a tasteful mouth of sand, and the older devs let out a collective groan.

“Come on, Dick- What was that?”

“It’s not my fault he’s a monster!”

There was pushing, and shoving, and all the things Tim liked to avoid as everyone lined up to go again.

He turned back to his computer.

He loved Stephanie. More than loved her. He wouldn’t be who he was without her and in the right circumstances, he’d probably move the world for her if she asked. But asking him to leave the computer at home had been a fruitless ask from the start. He only felt a tiny bit of guilt when he first pulled it out and he saw her watching from the beach.

But he was here. Outside. That was more than anyone else had been able to ask of him.

He wasn’t actually getting anything productive done. Using a mobile hotspot meant making certain sacrifices and he didn’t feel like downloading sixty gigs of data on a Verizon plan thank you.

“Are you working?”

Tim jumped. He needed to stop getting distracted. Behind him Conner cast a long shadow in the afternoon sun, and squinted down at Tim’s computer behind dorky red shades.

Conner was...

Conner wasn’t wearing a shirt, which made Tim nervous. More nervous than he should have been. Part of him never quite got over the fact Hot Guy, who had been a nameless faceless guy in a crowd for two years was now Conner, and Conner was no less hot. In fact, it was possible he was more attractive, shirtless, and sweaty, and smelling like sunscreen and smiling down at Tim while he leaned over, too close, to grab a beer out of the cooler.

If Tim stopped breathing it was only natural.

Conner halted though, and instead of pulling away after retrieving his beer, he leaned over, and lifted his glasses to peer at Tim’s screen.

“Oh my god you  _ are _ working.”

“I am not,” Tim yanked his knees up, clutching the laptop close, suddenly acutely aware of his own sleep worn t-shirt and every inch of bare leg not covered by his old, oversized cargo shorts. Why did he even wear them?

Conner grinned. “Right, then what are you doing?”

“It’s a personal project?”

“A personal project. In our proprietary engine.”

Tim tried not to sulk, really. So what if Tim’s hobbies and day job happened to line up somewhat nicely? Was that a crime?

He had a half composed speech about never working a day in your life when you love your job, and the merits of workaholism, and how really he’d been coding in the OMAC engine longer than anything so what of it? When Conner decided that Tim’s chair looked like a good place to take a seat. He plopped down, all probably 200+ pounds of him, and even if all those pounds were muscle, Tim’s indignant squawk was completely warranted.

Conner made himself at home, shouldering him over and popping open his drink. “Alright, so what are you working on if it’s not work?”

Tim was struck by the sudden heat of Conner’s proximity. He tried to swallow, throat dry, and turned to glare at his computer. Even in the partial shade offered by the company sponsored canopy, making out anything was a strain.

“Like I said, it’s a personal project. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Cool. If it doesn’t mean anything, then you totally won’t mind showing me?” And somehow, even though it would have sounded totally like a dick move coming from anyone else, Conner was looking at him earnestly, big blue eyes and intense curiosity.

Tim sighed.

“It’s a new hero, for JL2. Kind of. It’s more of a Robin- here let me show you.”

Tim did his best, with the awkward angles, the sun glare, and his own halting lack of confidence in the little thing he’d hacked together, to explain his creation.

“So, it’s a suped up fully functional independent Robin?”

“Kind of. Honestly I didn’t really think the actual character through that much. The art is just hacked together,” Conner grinned but didn’t say anything about it, “I was really more interested in fixing some of the systems we used to build Bats. I put together this modular gadgeteering system for him, to make him adaptable to a wide range of obstacles. I’ve always been more of an architect than a gameplay guy.”

“Talk to me when you say gadgeteering-”

“You know how Batman used to have all those attachments in JL1 so he could keep up with the other heroes? Instead of boosting his powers designers wanted to keep him human so they added all these tools instead-”

“Like the shark repellent! I remember watching the JL2 designers talk about that.”

“Right well, I think new Batman is super elegant but, you know. I don’t know. I liked the idea of a hero who was prepared for anything. So I started messing with my old Robin prototype. It’s not really anything but I...I started messing with it again recently. Just keeps me busy. It’s not gonna be anything.”

Conner looked very thoughtful for a moment, staring at the tiny shadow on Tim’s screen. Then he looked at Tim.

“Do you mind if I grab my computer?”

“You brought a computer?” Tim snapped his mouth shut, realizing how it sounded when he had his own already out.

“Look, I was working on something this weekend and I want your thoughts.”

Conner was already up and out of the chair, moving towards a pile of discarded bags.

A man after his own heart.

As he returned with a slim laptop and a mobile charging station Tim felt some of the tenseness and anxiety from dealing with Conner slip away. The man grinned in a way that was just a shade too familiar, and sat down next to him like he belonged there.

* * *

In the end they didn’t get (much) work done. The sunshine and inability of people to just leave Conner alone when it was obvious that was what he wanted made it impossible to do anything for more than fifteen minutes.

Tim’s hand snapped out to grab Bart round the wrist as the man reached to tag Conner into a beach game the other man hadn’t realized he had been invited too because he’d been too busy trying to puzzle out their editor.

“He’s busy,” Tim said, before Bart could say two words, and Bart walked away looking wounded.

“I don’t understand our hero set up at all,” Conner said, ignoring Bart and the forlorn looks getting sent their way by the party about to embark on a game of proper marco polo. “Like it feels like you built a bunch of superheroes and retrofitted the powers to fit in an editable system later.”

“Duh. I mean. Legacy tech. We’re fighting ourselves.”

“Also Superman is the worst-”

Tim laughed, really laughed then. “Yeah. That’s what I keep telling people. Amazing how they don’t listen.”

“He shouldn’t be tied up in so many systems. Literally every time I want to tweak strength values I have do it on him, and it’s just a headache, and I hate him already and I can tell by the end of this I’ll hate him more.”

“It’s the curse of being the first.”

“We fucked ourselves.”

“They’ll fix it in three.”

Conner paused, and looked up to see Tim’s sly grin and rolled his eyes. “I’d toss sand at you if you weren’t holding such an expensive computer. Is that a saying here? We’ll fix it in three?”

“It can be.” And Tim left it at that. He let his eyes wander to where the JL3 team was gathering round a fire pit. Dick had a hot dog speared and Donna had an arm around his shoulder. He looked up, and Tim looked away. He’d be getting an ear full for the whole “brought a computer to a beach party” thing later.

“Hey,” Conner nudged him gently. “The JL3 team, are they cool?”

“What? Of course. What do you mean?”

Conner shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know what I mean.”

* * *

Somehow Conner sat behind him on the bus, and that felt important. It felt intimate. That over the din of the bus home, Conner would kick the back of his seat, and look at Bart like “can you believe that guy?”

Like he thought he and Tim were friends.

It made Tim warm and uncomfortable and-

And he wouldn’t smile. But he’d look at Bart too, mid drunken bus karaoke, egged on by Gar and Dick, and he’d look back in Conner’s general direction “yeah, he’s unbelievable.”

Between him and the reassuring presence of Stephanie, he almost felt normal.

* * *

Conner still tried to push the independent heroes bit for about another week. Tim shot him down every time and tried not to think about whether or not the tenuous not friendship between them would survive. Project first, not quite friends later.

And eventually Conner did shut up about it.

“I’ll figure out something,” he said, “I’ll try something. But this was the best idea and I had to fight for it.”

He stormed back to the design den and left Tim staring at Jason’s old scribbles. He’d have to talk to Conner. They’d need to figure this game out, if nothing else between them.

So it was a long week. It was a long multiple weeks. And it was with a sort of finality and relief that Tim headed home on Friday. There would be no escape from work. Whether it was the project or Robin that haunted his dreams at night, Tim would be working. He preferred it at home, away from the sullen weight of expectation and the feeling of all eyes on him.

He stepped into the cool air of his dark apartment and sighed.

“Dick.”

Dick lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, bag still slung across his shoulder.

“Hey Baby Bird.” his voice was barely a whisper.

Tim sighed and resigned himself to not getting any work done. He set down his bag.

“Tell me what you need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm moving and having some existential dread this week. Here's a chapter, excuse the typos. We're still meandering our way towards a plot. Happy Vaccine Shipment Day tho?


	4. August

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first bad day took Tim completely by surprise. There had been no lead up or indication. One day he was laughing with Jason in the computer lab and the next he knocked on the apartment door and received no answer.
> 
> Jason continued to blow him off for the rest of the week.

The first bad day took Tim completely by surprise. There had been no lead up or indication. One day he was laughing with Jason in the computer lab and the next he knocked on the apartment door and received no answer.

Jason continued to blow him off for the rest of the week.

Tim tried not to let it bother him. After the first day of showing up at the lab and seeing only Artemis and the large, intimidating Biz in the back of the room, he’d turned and run. He found an alcove in the library and got no work done. He opened his phone and opened a message to Jason then closed it.

Then opened it again.

If he had done something wrong Jason would say. Jason didn’t seem like he would just...stop.

But in his heart Tim knew it was over. When he got up the nerve to ask Roy when he saw him if Jason was ok, and Roy had just shaken his head.

“He needs some time. That’s all.”

Tim had never felt like this before. He’d had friends, or thought he had. But not like Jason. Jason had cracked open that small part of Tim that lived, buried deep, and coaxed it out with promises of nights spent working together. Of acceptance and-

And now Tim wasn’t sure what was real anymore.

In the end he waited. There was nothing else to do.

* * *

Tim had never expected the grieving process to be easy on Dick. Dick was sunshine and laughter but more than that - Dick Grayson felt things. Dick Grayson had the full capacity to feel both the highs of a late night spent laughing with friends, and the lows of the grief of losing a father. In the face of Dick’s sheer emotions Tim stood like an afterimage. He wasn’t sure if he’d always been like that, or if the pure vivacity of Dick and Jason’s ability to feel so much so greatly had burned out Tim’s own abilities.

But for all Tim loved Dick for his warmth and ability to never shut off that part of himself, no matter how much it might hurt, Dick’s grief was hard. Harder still because it had never been this bad before.

Tim thought the world fell apart with Jason, but that wasn’t true. Bruce had absolutely shattered, but Dick? Back then losing Jason had been like losing a brother who could have been. A relationship that  _ might _ have blossomed had things been different. The grief was over might-have-beens as much as it had been over the actual loss.

This? Dick Grayson, boy wonder, had just lost his father. And now he was falling apart on Tim’s couch so Tim had to keep it together.

“I didn’t mean to just barge in on you,” he whispered into the couch cushions while Tim scrambled to find the leftover takeout that would constitute dinner.

“I know.”

“Tim, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Tim said, carefully setting the oven to reheat his day old Thai.

They sat in silence over their barely dinner. Dick looked tired. He always looked tired, had gained some permanent wrinkles when he took on the JL3 team back when Tim was still new and everything at Waynetech was shiny and full of promise.

They stared at the black screen of the TV and Tim watched Dick through the reflection.

“It’s stupid.” Dick said. “I know it is. I know. But I thought he was invincible. To me it wasn’t possible for him to- I never entertained the idea. I couldn’t.”

A heavy silence settled between his words.

“What is wrong with me?”

Tim nudged him, gently, with his knee. If he were better, if he were Dick, he’d have the words already. He’d have the other man wrapped in a hug and say all the things that made people feel safe and heard.

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” he said.

* * *

Having Dick around meant that Tim didn’t get to turn off for the weekend. He had to be there. He spent Friday up late, listened as Dick oscillated between half whispered despair and silence. Saturday Dick seemed determined to make up for his behavior, and did so in all the ways Tim understood least.

They went to brunch. Dick paid. They walked around the park. Dick made him stand outside and watch the people and it was boring and Tim did it because Dick looked like he might break if he said no.

“Remember learning to skateboard?”

“I remember Bruce shaking his head in disappointment when you came home with a chipped tooth,” Tim said, because that was what this was for. For reminiscing. For Bruce.

“You got pretty good.”

“I’m just naturally cool like that.”

Their morning was awash in a veneer of normalcy that Tim found disquieting. But Dick didn’t seem to know any other way to be. So Tim enjoyed the morning summer sun, blocked out the sound of kids screaming through the park, and let Dick talk about all the things that didn’t matter.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Dick wavered. He looked over at Tim from the living room couch. Tim had, admittedly, thought the man was doing better after the morning, and had snuck out his laptop. Not to do real work, but he browsed, answered emails, and then he looked up and Dick was staring at him.

“What are we going to do about Damian?”

“What about Damian?” Tim knew that had been the wrong answer when Dick frowned, shadow passing over his brow before he righted himself.

Tim kicked himself. Of course Dick was worried about Damian. Why wouldn’t he be. It hadn’t occurred to Tim the brat would need anything, hell if he was dying of thirst and Tim had the last glass of water, he suspected Damian would spit at him before asking for help.

But Damian adored Dick Grayson. And Dick was much the same. The two were more Bruce’s sons than either Jason or Tim had ever been and Dick had all sorts of notions about brotherly bonding and responsibility that Damian’s late arrival to the family had exploited.

“We can’t leave him by himself.”

“He’s not actually a kid, Dick,” Tim said, if only because while Damian would never fight Dick over it, he knew enough to know the younger man would bristle at being treated like a dependent. Like his life could be upturned by people who claimed to be responsible for him without his full say.

“He’s barely an adult. I mean, come on, I remember being eighteen.”

“So do I.”

Dick paused, looking at Tim and he didn’t look angry. Tim wasn’t sure Dick could get angry at him, but the small part of him, the part that was still ten, digging through the names in the credits of his favorite games, or sixteen and making grand plans to go knock on Waynetech’s door and demand they fix their game, or nineteen and so close he couldn’t actually believe it would happen, that part flinched.

“That’s different, Tim. Damian needs stability.”

Tim belatedly realized this wasn’t a conversation. This was a speech. He nodded. “What are you going to do?”

Dick looked incredibly guilty for someone who knew they were bringing it on themselves.

* * *

As Tim predicted, Damian hated the concept of living with Dick and he gave in almost immediately. There was the pretense of a fight, enough to make Dick feel like he really earned it when Damian finally sighed and slumped in his seat and said, “Very well, Richard.”

But pretense was all it was. Damian would walk on glass for Dick and had always held the man in a sort of place of awe despite anything he said otherwise. Tim understood. He’d probably do the same, already had in his own way.

So on a lazy Sunday, as the world kept on turning and the summer sun beat down on the pavement and Gotham smog persisted like it was still ‘77, Tim stood around, helping Damian load his bags into the back of Dick’s ten year old, fading blue Chevy, and ignoring the way he sneered at him as he grabbed the duffel off the sidewalk. He ignored the way Damian lingered by the manor door. The way he walked the same hallways five times checking for things he may have left behind even after they had said it was time to leave.

Looking at the back seat, it was funny to Tim how Damian could live in such a large house and walk away with so little.

“You’ll be back for dinner next Friday,” Alfred told Damian, while Damian reluctantly parted with Ace. The old dog still trailed after him as he made his way to the car waiting out front.

“We will, Alf,” Dick said, “don’t worry.”

* * *

Tim wasn’t at the bus stop today. Conner was almost disappointed. He was also relieved. He had spent twenty minutes in line at his usual coffee haunt trying to decide if buying Tim a coffee was crossing the line. He had a distinct feeling Tim would like it black, maybe with a sugar but probably not a latte or frappe guy. But also was it weird to bring someone you were always fighting with coffee? Even if you  _ knew _ they loved it? And really they’d spent the whole beach party together staring at broken tools and code and that was more intimate than coffee probably. Except it was work so maybe not.

In the end, he left with his own iced coffee and even though he’d been dreading seeing Tim, felt only disappointed when the other man failed to show up.

He leaned into his work instead. Cassie was awesome fun to work with. She had a thing where she didn’t seem to think Tim liked her and was shy about her good ideas, but if anyone knew a good time it was her.

And right now she was making her fun by grinding Conner’s poor Robin into dust using Wonder Woman’s special edition kung fu moves and Conner was about to lose his mind.

“This isn’t even fair - you aren’t playing fair!”

“Don’t bring kids to a woman’s game,” she cackled, and soon enough Conner’s screen was counting down to a respawn. He slumped back in his chair, ignoring the little 5, 4, 3, 2...

“You’re the worst.”

“Yeah well, that version of Rob is canned anyways.”

“Yeah. I’m meeting with the gameplay team today to talk about what changes we can actually make to the existing sidekick system.”

Cassie went awkward and silent, turning to her computer in a way that broadcasted Conner had said something wrong.

“Ok, I’m wrong if I make them heroes. I’m wrong if I make them sidekicks. I can’t win if you guys keep doing this.”

“You aren’t wrong it’s just...the sidekicks system was built by Tim.”

“Makes sense. He’s kind of a systems guy.”

“Yeah.” Cassie didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to.

Sometimes Conner didn’t blame them at all. Tim seemed sharp. In the bad way. Like if you slipped up with him he’d cut you open and leave you to bleed out. But so far Conner had been about as careful as a left footed elephant and Tim had been...

Well Tim had been strangely patient. All sharp words and amused looks and also easily cowed into giving Conner chances over and over, even when Conner outright defied him.

So maybe today wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he’d talk to Tim before he talked to the programmers.

* * *

Tim Drake looked odd. Not like, odd, odd. Tim wasn’t odd looking, he was a very attractive, normal looking man. But something seemed odd. He drifted past Conner in the morning, and he looked tired, but more than that he looked like he was seeing through him and it put Conner off at first.

As Tim drifted towards his office, Conner snapped himself out of his halting confusion and turned to half jog after him.

“Hey, Tim, wait up.”

Tim stuttered to a stop like Conner’s voice had taken a few minutes to actually hit his brain.

“Conner. Good morning.” Tim said, stiff and formal and Conner tried not to let it eat at him.

“Hey so, I wanted to talk to you about the sidekick system.”

Tim tensed visibly, eyes darting up to Conner’s face, now fully aware. “What about it?”

Wary. He sounded wary but not antagonistic. Conner put on his best winning grin. “Cassie told me you built it, originally. If we’re going to stick to this system, I’m going to need some tweaks. Or else some tools so I can make the tweaks myself, yeah?”

Tim still looked cautious. “Yeah. Of course...”

“Do you think you could build something like you were messing with at the Beach Party?”

“What?” Tim said.

“Not the gadget bit, but like, the powerset manager. It was super modular. And I want to make some, uh, rapid changes to the existing sidekicks and was hoping-”

“No,” Conner almost said something, but Tim’s eyes were moving rapidly, looking around the room like he could see something Conner didn’t so he held his tongue. “No what I did there, it doesn’t work like that- are you busy during lunch?”

“No?”

“Come get me at 12. Bring Cass.”

And with that Tim turned, but it wasn’t a no. Conner grinned and went back to the design den.

* * *

Cassandra Cain slipped into a small round table in the corner of the lunch room. She folded her hands neatly, smiled sweetly at Conner before turning her attention to Tim.

Cass’s eyes were dark, deep brown, and warm, and they singled in on their target with a keen intelligence that made it apparent there was an engineer’s brain at work. Tim matched her intensity in equal measure, barely looking up as he pulled out a whiteboard and tucked the cap of a green expo marker between his teeth.

He drew lines across the board that Conner ignored in favor of staring at him instead. He still seemed off. Paler than usual maybe? Normally Tim seemed to tune the world out, but today it felt different somehow. Conner still hadn’t figured out what it was.

“Alright. Cass is here because she’s our best engineer bar none, and I want her insight in case I say something stupid.”

Cass grinned, wordless and toothy, and it warmed Conner’s heart to see someone look at Tim like that. Everyone else seemed to treat him like he was made of glass- no like he was a bomb, one slight brush away from going off.

“So talk to me about what you want to do?”

Conner halted. He had known this would be him, pitching his ideas to Tim, but for whatever reason he suddenly felt tongue tied. “I uh, ok. Tell me if this won’t work-”

“Just tell me what you need, Conner.”

“Alright, well. You know how you have the gadgeteering system for, well?”

Tim looked up. The marker hovered over the dry erase board, and Tim’s face was completely flat. No expression. No furrowed brow like he had at the beach while discussing level options for his little side project. Conner felt himself losing ground and tried again.

“All I need is, um, some flexible options for the sidekicks. Uh what I’m thinking is, you know instead of locking sidekick abilities to be a hardcoded option. I want to be able to to sort of pick and choose. Like if I’m playing Batman and I want to deploy Robin, I could have options, like a brawler Robin - like the one you made  _ or _ a support Robin.”

Tim frowned. He tapped the pen against his chin. “The sidekicks work like every other hero, their powersets are tied into the core power system... alright. My first thought is some kind of swappable archetype system. We’d hard code the power profiles into each archetype, but archetypes could be swappable...”

Cass reached out and tapped Tim on the shoulder. She grabbed the pen out of his outstretched hand and scribbled across Tim’s notes. Tim tilted his head and-

Cass started scribbling what appeared to be a terribly drawn rendition of the game’s editor. Conner could follow it, roughly. It looked like her suggestion amounted some kind of loadout editor of some kind, with a limited set of options similar to Tim’s pitch but more modular. He watched Tim take his time, considering her sketch, then take the pen back.

And then all Conner had to do was sit back and watch them. Tim would voice his thoughts out loud only half the time, and even as he voiced them, would trail off as if he expected Cass to read his mind. And as far as Conner could tell, Cass did. She’d nod, and pause, then shake her head, using diagrams to voice her disapproval, venturing occasionally into sign language that Tim seemed able to read and sign back. The two worked like two pieces of a complementary puzzle, pulling in Conner only when they needed clarifications on a requirement here or there, but mostly building on each other.

And Tim, like a wind up boy, went from colorless, and grey to standing, hands stained in marker ink as he scrubbed away lines with his finger tips. He didn’t smile, but that serious furrow to his brow had returned.

By the time the two were done drawing up initial plans, Tim didn’t look broken anymore and Conner had to struggle to catch his attention when they were done, Tim was so absorbed in his work. He felt a relief he couldn’t quite explain and Tim looked up at him, almost confused.

“Yes Conner?”

“Thanks for the help. Do you need anything else from me?”

“No, no we’re good. We’ll have something for you to mess with in a few days I...thanks.”

And then Tim, still looking confused, smiled almost before walking away with Cass.

When Conner sat back down he realized he hadn’t actually touched his lunch, and began to dig into the bacon spinach salad when Cassie dropped into the seat next to him.

“That looks like it went well,” Cassie said.

Bart immediately slid into the seat across from him. “Well, Sounds like T-Bird is gonna make you something special.”

“Nice to see Cass out of her pod,” Jaime dropped his lunch next to Bart and joined them at the table. “and Tim out of the fish tank.”

“Seems like they were really into it. Did you talk to them about the swappable sidekick powers?”

“Basically. They’re gonna prototype something up for me to play with by the end of the week.”

“Sweet.”

Conner looked back towards where Tim had long disappeared into the programming pit. He could see two heads bent over a computer in the far back of the next room.

He’d never seen Tim like that with anyone before.

“So...what’s Tim’s deal?”

“Excuse me?” Cassie asked, looking up sharply.

Bart also looked up and Conner felt his face heat up. “Just, you know. He seems...”

“He’s, ya know, a programmer. That’s his deal.”

“I mean are he and Cass...ya know?” Conner didn’t know how else to say it and the more he talked, the more he felt mortified and wanted to take it all back. Why had he said  _ anything? _

“Oh, oh no way,” Bart said. “Not a chance.”

“Oh?” Conner tried not to sound too interested.

“I don’t think Tim really...does  _ ya know,”  _ Bart said, twisting his spoon thoughtfully, “Ya know?”

“He does- He did Stephanie, I mean, he and Stephanie- you know what I meant!” Jaime devolved into a senseless stutter while Bart snickered.

“Why do you ask?” Cassie said, and Conner could tell by the look on her face she already knew the answer. He shrugged.

“No reason, really.”

“Yeah well, Stephanie aside, Tim doesn’t do people. He barely does friends, so good luck with that,” Jaime said.

“He’s not that bad.” Bart said, but didn’t really fight it.

Cassie was still watching him intensely. “Jaime’s right. He’s not into people. Not like that. May want to try a different tree.”

“I wasn’t-”

“Just trust me.”

* * *

The phone rang on a Thursday. Tim picked up, not really checking to see who it was and nearly dropped it when he heard Roy say:

“Can you come over?”

“Is he okay?”

“Look, just, come over, ok?”

Tim had had a lot of time to twist it all around and count all the ways the things between him and Jason could have fallen apart. Despite assurances that it was the man’s own fragile psyche that was the culprit, Tim had laid awake in his bunk sure that he’d fucked up the only good thing he’d had going for himself since he left Gotham.

It had hurt, but more than that it had terrified him.

Without Jason Tim was suddenly adrift in a world that had never cared about him. And that hadn’t bothered him before, but Jason had made things seem possible that hadn’t before and now they were slipping away alongside Tim’s sleep schedule and sanity.

So he immediately ran across campus to Jason and Roy’s apartment. He’d barely knocked when the door swung open and Jason stood, in a white stained t-shirt and grey sweatpants and several days of stubble.

“Hey.”

He sounded rough, as rough as he looked. Tim had never been a touchy feely person but he had to consciously hold himself back from flinging himself at Jason. Had to remind himself Jason was a man he’d known for barely a month. That nothing they had really mattered unless Jason said it did and he needed to mind his manner and watch his hands and that kept Tim’s arms at his side.

“Hi,” Tim said. He started working out how to ask “are you ok?” without sounding stupid, and Jason stepped aside.

Jay and Roy’s apartment still held board games, haphazardly stacked, the occasional beer bottle, and a suspicious amount of chip bags. Tim thought Jay would stick him on the couch, but Jason led him down the hall, to his room.

There was a light under Roy’s door across the hall but otherwise no sign of the other man. Jason sat down at his desk and gestured for Tim to sit on the edge of the bed. Tim sat, so acutely aware of his surroundings it was painful. The glare of the shitty apartment lighting, the posters of Batman on the wall, the bed unmade and the fitted sheet riding up the left corner. The feeling of Jason having perhaps just got up from said bed and the sight of the carpet under his feet as he stared at them instead of Jason.

He should have taken off his shoes.

“So. Sorry for ghosting you for a couple weeks there.”

“It’s okay.”

“I had a rough week. Didn’t really want to see anybody. Not that it’s an excuse, but I figure you’re my friend and I ought to apologize when I treat you like crap.”

Tim looked up at the word friend. He didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know how to hold that word without breaking.

And Jason was looking away. He messed with his hands, picking at hangnails instead of looking at Tim-

Tim who had never raised his voice, weighed a buck fifty soaking wet, and had managed to slip by unnoticed his entire life.

“I brought my computer. If you want to keep working on our project?” Tim said quietly, in place of anything meaningful.

Jason looked confused, adorably so, for a moment, and then his face split into a large grin.

“Yeah.” He said, “I’d love that.”

* * *

“Do you always stay late?” Conner asked from Tim’s doorway.

Tim looked up. While he did, in fact, usually stay late, this time he really did get distracted. He had been “in the zone” or at least hyper focused to some degree.

“Yes and so do you apparently.” Tim said, already reaching for his bag.

“If you work yourself to death building my tool I will officially be the worst hire Waynetech has ever made.”

Tim tried and failed to suppress a snort of laughter. “We hired Garfield. I think you’re fine.”

“Are you doing ok?” Conner asked, falling into step with Tim as they left the office for the night.

“I...yes?” Tim said and he was. But it still left him a little self conscious, the fact Conner had asked.

“You looked rough this morning.”

“Long weekend.”

Conner held his gaze as they waited for the elevator.

“I can imagine.”

Tim didn’t know why, but it left him feeling warm inside.

* * *

The first review was on a Friday.

Conner knew that it wasn’t perfect, but he was actually kind of proud of his hasty, ill advised changes to the game. While he wouldn’t go so far as to call it fixed, the swappable sidekick templates were a huge step up from the previous iteration of the sidekick mechanic.

They’d even nicknamed them. Vanilla Robin, with backflips enabled and health boosted, would dart across the map. He did very little damage but was annoying, a distraction meant to be deployed once a round before being knocked out of the game by the opposing team. Tim’s Robin or the one he had originally designed, was more of a tank. His damage output had been boosted and in exchange, he didn’t fly across the map. He wasn’t fun to play, but he soaked up damage and could pin a single opponent down, if only temporarily.

And then there was Conner’s Robin. Conner’s Robin didn’t fly like original Robin, or soak damage like Tim’s Robin, Conner’s Robin was more a dps monster. Easy to take out,  _ if  _ you could hit him, Conner had taken some liberties with the third Robin, given him some of the old gadgets Tim had shown him from Batman, given his weapons more reach even as he kept having to knock back his health to keep him from being too effective.

In the end, if you played Batman, at the start of the round you could pick your Robin loadout, and every respawn you could swap Robins. The mechanic was still inherently clunky, but the variety had added a new spark to their games.

Cassie had taken on the Wonder Girls personally, and they intended to hit Speedy next. Tim popped his head into the den.

“Hey, you guys ready?”

“Jaime should have the build,” Cassie said, standing. Tim nodded.

He seemed better than he had just a week or two ago, but Conner reckoned he had to be nervous. “Dick’s sitting in on today’s playtest.”

“Dick Grayson?” Cassie asked, a little skip in her voice as she tripped over the ‘gray’ in Grayson.

“Yeah. Figured we’d need fresh eyes on this. And he helped with the original Titan’s so.” Tim shrugged and trailed off. “I’ll meet you in Watchtower.”

“Does Dick Grayson normally sit in on our reviews?” Conner asked, unable to stop the slight nerves suddenly bubbling in his stomach.

Dick Grayson was the current lead on Justice League 3.

Dick Grayson had been the lead designer on Titans.

Dick Grayson was going to play his game.

“Rarely. He used to come by more back when Jason...” Cassie trailed off and Conner tried to be understanding. The name Jason Todd was a bad word around the office, and no one seemed to be able to reference him without a gaping silence following their words.

It was strange how much space Jason took up in the office. Conner hated it but didn’t want to ask. Didn’t feel like it was his place to pry. He grabbed a notebook and followed Cassie to the Watchtower.

Tim and Stephanie were already waiting in the room. Jaime had pulled a chair up to the TV and Dick was sitting, ankle resting on his knee and leg bouncing, at the table.

“You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been in here,” he looked around the room a little wistful, and sipped a coffee. “The more things change.”

Tim made a noncommittal sound and stood stiffly behind Dick’s chair. He looked over as Conner and Cassie stepped in, but then quickly returned his attention to Dick.

“You’re getting old,” he told Dick flatly.

“You youngin’s and your disrespect. What is the world coming too?”

Dick smiled, and he looked at Tim with a softness that Tim shared when he flashed his own shy smile, so quick it might have been Conner’s imagining.

“You must be our new Lead Designer-”

“Mid-Level.” Tim interrupted as Dick stood to shake Conner’s hand. “But we’ll see.”

The second part was said quietly enough it could almost be ignored, but Conner could feel his eyes bugging out of his head as he looked at Tim. Because it felt like Tim was implying- and god Conner still could barely wrap his head around being here at Waynetech and the implication felt too big, too much. He stumbled and shook Dick’s hand. Dick smiled.

“I loved Syndicate, by the way.”

“Thanks?” Conner said. No one here ever talked about his game. About LexCorp or Project Cadmus or their games.

“We’re lucky to have you. Now, what do you have for me today?”

Jaime booted up the game, Conner sat down, and everyone turned to look at the TV.

* * *

The new Robin flew out of the shadows like nothing anyone had ever seen before. He dressed in the the former Robins’ costume but he didn’t move like them. Where the first had been flighty, his laughter lighting up the battlefield, and the second had been a force of pure nature, this Robin was neither. 

Almost seamlessly he slipped between the spaces Batman needed him in, and even before the opposing face of Riddler bore down on them, it was clear who would be the victor.

* * *

Dick had an odd look on his face. Dark blue eyes watched the screen instead of Jaime and Cassie as they played. He had a hand thoughtfully tucked under his chin, and he frowned as Riddler got thrashed within the course of two minutes.

Unable to keep himself from explaining his decisions, Conner started talking. “We’re trying to compensate for the lack of playability in original Robin. Playtests were coming back pretty bad so-”

“Have you done this to all the heroes?”

“We only had time for Wonder Woman and Batman, but it seems like it works.”

“This completely changes the balance of the game,” Dick said, and he didn’t look upset but he didn’t exactly look happy.

“True, but at least the sidekicks are a little more playable.” Conner said.

Dick sighed. He ran a hand over his face and looked at Conner briefly, before sitting up and turning to Tim.

“This won’t go over well. And it certainly won’t make it past a rough implementation before the rest of the team starts to suffer. We can obviously rebalance a lot, but this is completely uneven. Putting the changing Robin’s aside, putting a bunch of heroes with sidekicks into a round with Villains who don’t have them is practically unfair.”

“We could give them sidekicks too,” Conner said.

“Look I know I signed the dotted line for this project, but even I think that’s pushing it too far. This game is about playing larger than life characters. Honestly this is a barely better implementation of a system we’ve already tried. It isn’t going to work.”

Conner bristled as Dick brushed him off with a wave.

Conner knew this job wouldn’t be easy. Knew he hadn’t proven himself, but being dismissed by the man who made his favorite game just minutes into a review stung more than he had thought possible.

Conner wasn’t even good at this.

“Try something else,” Dick stood and started gathering his things.

“Conner was just working within constraints I gave him. I asked him to keep the old system,” Tim said quietly. He looked up at Dick but didn’t look half as nervous or panicky as Conner felt, all things considered.

“You need to get more creative. I can’t in good conscious sign off on this. We’d practically have to rebuild the game. Call me back when you have something new to try. We need to get this thing off the ground.”

Dick walked out.

It took longer for everyone else to leave. The wind had clearly been knocked out of Cassie’s sails, and she slunk out of the room with Jaime, muttering darkly. Stephanie looked between Conner, and Tim, and then somewhat oddly shuffled out of the room too leaving Kory, who leaned over and tapped Tim on the shoulder.

“It’s five. It’s Friday. I’m putting a meeting in for first thing Monday. I imagine we’ll be scrapping the current work.”

“Yeah. Yeah thanks Kory.”

Then she left, notebook in hand, bounce in her step and Conner was left with Tim, who stared at the blank TV long enough Conner felt awkward. He cleared his throat.

“He was kind of a dick.”

Tim laughed, breathless, like he hadn’t expected it, and turned away.

“It could have been worse.” He dawdled by the door, like he was thinking about something, then looked back at Conner. “Sorry he railed on you for my decision. See you Monday?”

It sounded oddly hopeful.

“You can’t get rid of me now.”

* * *

Promises, promises. Conner figured it was true though. Come hell or high water, he was in it now. No matter how much he was beginning to question if he should be.

Tim went home with Dick. At least that’s what it looked like. Dick came by his office just after their meeting ended, wearing a jean jacket and shades, and smiling like nothing in the world could be wrong. Conner watched it all from the back of the pit, feeling something unnatural and sour creep up on him. Watched Dick knock on the glass door. Watched Tim sigh, and frown and roll his shoulders while saying something he couldn’t hear. Tim grabbed his bag, and Dick slung an arm around Tim’s shoulders while they walked out of the office.

He turned and decided to actually get to work. Dick Grayson would eat his words.

He stumbled into Jaime carrying a cinderblock of a rig. Jaime tumbled, and the rig went down. Conner’s hands snapped out to catch the computer before Jaime lost it completely.

“Thanks, man,” Jaime said, as Conner righted the metal case and Jaime righted himself.

“Yeah. No problem. Where are you even taking this thing? Let me help.”

Jaime smiled and while he looked uneasy, let Conner do the heavy lifting. It wasn’t late but it was Friday and people had filtered out of their floor. Jaime pressed the button for the elevator down.

“Thanks man. I was just moving some stuff around for Freddy, ya know?”

“Freddie?”

“IT.”

Conner nodded and pretended like he knew.

“That was pretty brutal in there,” Jaime said and there was an underlying...something in his tone. That was something Conner had noticed a lot of lately. All these hushed whispers, treating Tim like he was a glass pressure bomb just one bad kick from going up.

These people had some serious scars. 

“It’s just a review man. It happens.” And sure it had crushed Conner to have it go so poorly, but someone at this studio needed to act like this was just a game and not heart surgery and if it had to be Conner so be it.

“Yeah but I mean-“ Jaime shuffled awkwardly, seeming to realize his tone had been anything but subtle. “I guess it's just rough in general. Tim has had a shitty few weeks and I’m sure that didn’t help.”

“Yeah what gives with that? People round here sure don’t seem sympathetic.”

“It’s complicated.”

The door dinged open. Jaime stepped in first and held the door. Conner followed, shifting his hold on the PC so he could shuffle in.

“For what it’s worth I think you’ve been a great hire.”

“Yeah?”

Jaime nodded as the door slid shut. “Yeah, I mean, I saw you guys working on Jason’s project during the beach party. That’s gotta be good, right?”

* * *

“That,” Roy said, “is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen.”

Tim’s first instinct was to bristle. His shoulders hunching in. He knew it was stupid. None of his ideas were  _ good _ but they were fun sometimes and no one had any obligation to look at them or take them seriously even if his heart did that stupid thing where it swooped into his stomach every time he had to come face to face with how childish and immature and stupid his-

“So you making it, or what?” Jason asked, in an equally aggressive tone. 

Roy snatched the notebook paper violently out of Jason’s hands. “Yeah yeah, fuck off. I’ll get it to you-” here he paused assessing.

The sketch had been collaborative. A stupid idea that Jason and Tim had at two AM, after slamming into a wall when it came to trying to figure out how to get a grappling system working from scratch. Jason had had the idea, and Tim, being an enabler, had grabbed a pen and a notebook and as Jason talked, he sketched, adding details here and there as it occurred to him what things Jason might be neglecting in his enthusiasm.

Looking at the wobbly lines of the character, Jay had grabbed his own pen, adding the lines and the flare, vents and pockets.

And soon enough they had been cackling, talking breathless about ideas and possibilities.

“A Batman who doesn’t grapple,” Tim said.

“Yeah fuck grappling.” 

“Batman with guns.”

“Azrael without the spikes,” Tim laughed again.

At 2 AM, laughing into Jason’s shoulder, that stupid drawing had felt like a world of possibility. It had felt fun, pure and simple like when he was a kid, sitting alone in his room, and the world opened up for the first time and nothing mattered more than Batman and Superman and Robin and Nightwing.

“Next Friday,” Roy said.

“Really?” Tim snapped his mouth shut when Roy looked at him oddly.

“Sweet. Can you animate too?”

“Fuck you, what do I look like, your two bit whore? Do it yoursel.”

“Sure thing, sweetcheeks.”

Tim wasn’t sure he followed the conversation at all. As he watched Jason smacked his lips, grinned and turned back around to continue working like nothing was a matter. Roy turned too, grabbing the drawing. He picked up a pen, and leaned over his expansive tablet. 

That was it. Like that, Roy would make Jason and Tim’s idiotic childish fantasy real. Tim settled in to watch him work, and fought down the bubbling confusing emotions that threatened to open his mouth and have him asking stupid questions, like why the other two were so abrasive, and why they couldn’t talk like normal people, and did they  _ really _ think it was a good idea?

He buried those thoughts. Opened his computer and opened up a homework assignment he’d put off for about one week too long.

* * *

Somehow Tim survived the weekend. It passed in a kind of foggy haze.

Dick had left, though marks of his presence remained in the apartment. A throw blanket tossed across the couch, unopened left overs from Alfred in the fridge, the sense of empty permeating the place that hadn’t been there before.

Tim found himself drifting in between sleep and work and back again, without much space in between for being present or aware. He’d wake up, sit down at the computer, only to look up and find it was dark and he felt lightheaded.

He should have been working on real work, but he found himself deep in the guts of his old projects instead. The old half finished mods and heroes made by someone much younger, much more optimistic about both their coding skills and their future.

He tore up the guts of the character first. Rebuilt the character controller from scratch. Back then they’d been young, still chasing the feeling of playing Batman for the first time. But Tim was a better programmer now, and a better game developer. He gutted all the parts that reminded him of Justice League - ruthlessly removing any references to flight, going back and running the character through the scene and tweaking and tweaking until the old character moved with heft and weight and precision.

The character,  _ their _ character, walked like a new man by midnight on Saturday. By Sunday he had started rewriting an old grappling script and when he woke Monday, it was passed out at his desk with a crick in his neck.

His body ached. His mind whirred. He saw only half faded memories of Jason while he poured the hot water for his coffee and grabbed a short cold shower. 

Memories of Jason, blurred too with the overwhelming presence now of a character whose motions through the world Tim could now calculate out of hand. He stepped outside with his keys, and thought about how the weight of his feet hitting the ground didn’t feel as heavy as it should. 

The day was overcast, resulting in that strange filtered light that cast no shadows, and left Tim feeling like the renderer for real life had broken.

He had never written a renderer before. If he did, would the world seem as fake as the weight of his hand did?

He slipped into an unoccupied space on the curb, not even aware of the wait or the motion. The commute was mindless. He wanted to tackle Jason’s abilities next. They’d never finished them the first time around. Not the way Tim had envisioned they-

“Hey.”

Tim turned. Conner Kent smiled, and held up a coffee cup with a little black logo reading  _ Mo’s Cafe _ . He held it out.

Tim reached for it, body acting, but mind blank, unsure of what was expected, of what this was supposed to be.

The cup was warm in his hands, and as the smell of coffee wafted towards him, he found suddenly he could hear the sounds of traffic crashing over him, and the wind biting through his long sleeved grey henley. Conner simply smiled and sipped his own coffee.

“Happy Monday,” Conner said, “Consider it a peace offering.”

As Tim stood there, swamped in the sensation of suddenly feeling like the world was too loud and too much, he took a sip of the coffee to calm his nerves.

Rich, full, warm. He took another gulp and snuck a look at Conner to find the other man grinning.

“Offering accepted,” Tim said, smile small.

Conner lit up so bright Tim found he couldn’t focus on the overcast sky and strange whitegrey shadows.


End file.
